BIRD flu has spread its wings once more, this time striking out for Africa and further across south-east Europe. As 快猫短视频 went to press, it was feared that H5N1 was causing outbreaks in poultry in eight Nigerian states and may have been circulating there in poultry since the autumn.
The World Health Organization says it is extremely concerned about what the virus might do to people in Africa, whose immunity is often already compromised by malnutrition or HIV. Flu-like symptoms have been reported in several Nigerians who came into contact with dead birds, including two children on an affected farm in Kaduna state, who were said to have been coughing up blood. That has also been seen in human cases of H5N1 in east Asia and Turkey.
鈥淔lu-like symptoms have been reported in several Nigerians exposed to dead birds鈥�
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Meanwhile, tests have confirmed the presence of H5N1 in dead swans discovered in Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Azerbaijan. The location of these dead birds and the discovery of H5N1 in Nigeria are 鈥渃onsistent with the movement of wild birds鈥�, says Juan Lubroth of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. Genetic details have not yet been released from all of the outbreaks, but in Nigeria and Italy the virus is genetically identical to the one that appeared in wild birds at Qinghai Lake in north-west China last spring, and then spread across Siberia to the Black Sea coast and Turkey.
All outbreaks so far have been near wintering spots for ducks that spend the summer in Siberia, where there were multiple cases of the Qinghai strain last year. But Lubroth warns that it is poultry that pose most risk to people.
