Two more die from bird flu

The human toll in Asia’s bird flu crisis rose today to 18 with two more deaths in Vietnam, and a UN official said pigs tested positive for the virus that has infected tens of millions of poultry across the region.

China investigated mysterious reports of finches dropping dead from the sky to see if they were linked to avian influenza and Indonesian villagers set thousands of chickens ablaze as they sought to rid the popular resort island of Bali of the disease.

Ten countries are battling bird flu, culling 50 million chickens and other fowl as international health officials seek ways to contain a virus that has rapidly spread across half of the Asian continent.

The virus has jumped to people in Vietnam and Thailand with health officials tracing most of those cases directly to contact with sick birds.

But experts have said it is possible the virus jumped to people through another mammal, such as pigs, which have been implicated in human flu epidemics in the past. Swine are genetically more similar to humans than are birds.

Anton Rychener, of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, said pigs in and around Hanoi tested positive for the bird flu. He did not specify how many were sampled or which lab did the testing.

“Nasal swabs taken from pigs have been positive for H5N1,” said Rychener, adding that test results on blood samples taken from the pigs have not been completed. “It continues to be under investigation and is of concern. We’ll be bringing in an expert.”

Some health officials cautioned the tests were not conclusive, and that it was much too early to start talking about culling pigs. Other rigorous tests on swine have come back negative and the Hanoi samples may have been contaminated.

Doctors in Vietnam today announced two additional deaths, a six-year-old girl from southern Dong Nai province and a 24-year-old man from central Lam Dong province.

Health experts at an emergency bird flu meeting overnight in Rome endorsed a strategy of vaccinating healthy chickens alongside the continuing slaughters of infected poultry that the World Health Organisation has said is the best way to deal with the outbreak.

A widely available human vaccine is believed about six months away, but some bird vaccines are available now.

Indonesian villagers held an unusual Hindu cremation ceremony, meanwhile, aimed at ridding Bali of bird flu, sprinkling thousands of sick chickens with holy water and then setting them ablaze.

The ceremony – normally reserved for burials of humans – is part of Indonesia’s campaign to destroy as many as 10 million chickens. Bali is one of the country’s hardest-hit provinces.

Health officials in eastern China were looking into a mass death of brambling finches, a migratory sparrow-like bird that winters throughout China.

One official in the Jiangsu province city of Taizhou, who gave her surname as Xu, said about 100 brambling finches fell dead from the sky in the city’s Kou’an town. Blood samples were taken the same day but results were not yet available, she said.