Blinkx Video: UN: Bird flu has spread more recently through the trade of live birds rather than the migration of wild birds, the U.N. has said

UN: Bird flu has spread more recently through the trade of live birds rather than the migration of wild birds, the U.N. has said
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ITN Source

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UN: Bird flu has spread more recently through the trade of live birds rather than the migration of wild birds, the U.N. has said

Bird flu has been spreading recently through the trade of live birds rather than the migration of wild birds, the U.N. has said. This includes the avian flu that has was discovered in the U.K. last week. "The most recent information I've got on that in the last 24 hours is that there does seem to be possibility that the movement of bird parts from Hungary to Britain seems to have taken place around the locations in Hungary and Britain where the virus was reported and so there's a lot of interest at the moment as to whether or not that would explain the arrival of the virus in the U.K," said UN Co-ordinator for Avian and Human Influenza David Navarro. "And we suspect that the reasons for the current spread is more to do with trade in live birds than to do with the movement of the virus through wild birds. That said, it's still a bit difficult to explain some of the outbreaks that have happened for example in Japan and the Republic of Korea." British officials initially said they believed the virus was brought to Britain by wild birds and was unlikely to have been linked to the Hungarian outbreak weeks earlier. But they changed their minds on Thursday, saying they now believe the strain found in Britain was identical to that found in Hungary. Bernard Matthews, Europe's largest turkey producer which has had 160,000 birds destroyed after Britain's first outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu in domestic poultry last week, has acknowledged shipping 38 tonnes of partially processed turkey meat from Hungary per week. The firm suspended shipments from Hungary. The UN has seen an uptick in bird flu in the past few months. The existence of the virus in birds has now been confirmed in Indonesia, Vietnam, the Republic of Korea, China, Thailand, Japan, Egypt, Nigeria, Hungary and the U.K.. Transmissions of the virus to humans has been confirmed in China, Egypt, Hungary and Nigeria. With 272 confirmed cases of avian flu transmission to humans, avian flu is not yet a global pandemic, said Navarro. It can stay that way by restricting the movement of infected birds and with increased public awareness.

ITN Source | February 10, 2007