Europe bracing to battle bird flu

BERLIN -- Europe is bracing for bird flu and the potentially catastrophic pandemic the virus might bring.

Public health officials on the continent, spurred by grim warnings from the World Health Organization, are hoping that the disease spreading westward from Asia will afflict only domestic poultry. But as a strain of the avian disease was detected in Europe for the first time over the weekend, governments were seeking ways to cope with a virus that epidemiologists consider likely to transform into a human pathogen that could trigger a global outbreak of deadly influenza similar to one that killed millions in 1918.

In Romania, three cases of avian flu were confirmed Saturday at a poultry farm in the Danube delta marshlands, causing officials to quarantine several small communities as health workers wearing protective garb against microbes slaughtered hundreds of domestic ducks and geese apparently infected by birds migrating from Russia.

Authorities fear that the Romania outbreak marks the arrival in Europe of the H5N1 strain of the flu, which has the potential for mutating into a form that could sweep the globe in a matter of weeks, according to international health agencies. There is still a strong possibility that the Romanian fowl were infected by a less virulent strain, and more tests are underway to isolate the virus, officials said yesterday.

In France, meanwhile, public health officials are stockpiling 200 million germ-proof face masks and expect to have 14 million doses of antiflu vaccine ready for public immunizations by early next year.

In Germany, scientists on an island in the Baltic Sea are preparing to douse birds migrating from Asia with an experimental vaccine that would kill the lethal bird flu virus before it can reach people.

In Switzerland, the pharmaceutical company Roche cautioned consumers Friday against buying its flu drug, Tamiflu, over the Internet because public alarm over the possibility of a worldwide outbreak of deadly influenza has raised the prospect of counterfeit vaccines entering the market.

Europe has begun sounding alarms, as well as giving reassurances: Public health officials think the form of the disease carried by wild birds can be contained; of far greater concern, they say, is not the influenza virus as it is now but the virus it could become.

The officials regard the avian flu strain known as H5N1 as the single greatest disease threat to humanity because it mutates rapidly, can absorb genes from other viruses, and has high potential to assume a form that would make it very contagious to people.

Health officials from 80 countries and eight major international agencies gathered in Washington last week to discuss ways of responding to a pandemic, with US Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael O. Leavitt describing the world as ''woefully unprepared."

At a meeting of medical and veterinary chiefs on this side of the Atlantic last month, the European Union's public health commissioner, Markos Kyprianou, stressed urgency: ''Coordination of veterinary and public health authorities at the EU and national levels is essential to address the threat of a global influenza pandemic."

The H5N1 avian flu has killed at least 65 people in Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and Cambodia. The strain is carried by chickens, ducks, turkeys, and geese -- as well as by wild fowl -- and in its present form seems to infect only humans with high levels of exposure to poultry. For now it is a deadly nuisance that poses a threat only to relatively small numbers of farmers and slaughterhouse workers.

But there is mounting concern that the virus may change into a highly contagious form that could spread human to human, causing an influenza pandemic as ferocious as the 1918 outbreak of so-called Spanish flu, which caused at least 20 million deaths worldwide. Some health historians put the toll at 50 million.

Europe is considered more exposed to present forms of bird flu than is North America because it lies along the migratory routes of fowl traveling from central Asia.

In August, the disease reached the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains, the Russian range separating Asia from Europe.

And yesterday health officials confirmed that avian flu has reached the continent after three ducks found dead at a Romanian poultry farm tested positive for the virus. Agriculture Minister Gheorghe Flutur told Romanian reporters that further tests are needed to determine if the virus is H5N1 or one of the milder strains of avian flu, representing less of a potential danger to humans.

The Romanian poultry farm, located amid Europe's largest wetlands, seems to have been infected by birds migrating from Russia. Officials sealed off the region around Tulcea in the Danube delta marshes yesterday, and inoculated 700 people with flu vaccines. An additional 100,000 dosages were being rushed yesterday to the region, Romanian officials said.

Across Europe, health officials ordered higher levels of surveillance. ''The first line of defense is increased surveillance of migratory wild birds, mainly to meet the threat of avian flu to agricultural birds," said Philip Tod, spokesman for the EU Directorate for Health and Consumer Protection.

Europe is stockpiling antiviral medicines although none may be effective because the exact form the human-to-human virus may take is not yet known. ''Known antiviral medicines could alleviate the worst effects of the disease and help keep people alive," Tod said.

In the Netherlands -- where two years ago an outbreak of a less virulent form of bird flu nearly destroyed the country's substantial poultry industry -- all chickens, ducks, turkey, and other domestic fowl must be kept inside barns or in specially covered runs, to protect them from exposure to wild birds. The milder strain that cost Dutch farmers more than $150 million in lost income was apparently spread by wild birds.

Meanwhile, scientists on a German island located on a major migratory route off the northeastern coast are experimenting with a vaccine aimed at wild fowl. The vaccine would be administered to flocks of fowl either through air sprays or through drinking water. The idea is to hit the virus before the birds reach heavily populated or agricultural areas.

European countries also are organizing a large aid effort that will help relatively poor Asian nations fight the virus. ''The best thing is to attack it at its roots in Southeast Asia," Tod said.

In Turkey, veterinary workers killed thousands of chickens, turkeys, and geese yesterday to prevent the spread of avian flu after the country's first case was reported at a poultry farm near the Aegean Sea, according to news reports. Authorities rushed in after 2,000 birds at the operation died of the disease late last week, according to Reuters.

Material from Reuters was used in this report.