A Dutch veterinarian has died of pneumonia after catching the poultry disease bird flu, officials said on Saturday, raising fears that a mutated version of the virus could cause a SARS-type epidemic in people.
The 57-year-old man died on Thursday in the southern city of Den Bosch, the Health Ministry said. He fell ill two days after working on a farm infected with bird flu, or avian virus.
"Because the bird flu virus was detected in the lungs and there is no other possible clinical explanation, there are strong indications that the man died as a result of the bird flu virus," the Health Ministry said in a statement.
The World Health Organization has warned that the disease could turn into a human epidemic, just as some scientists believe a bird virus could have helped cause the deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) sweeping the globe.
But a WHO spokesman played down the fear on Saturday, saying the disease did not appear to spread easily from human to human.
The Dutch have been grappling for a month to contain the bird flu outbreak that has spilled into Belgium and is nearing Germany, amid concerns that bird and human flu could mix in pigs and produce a mutation that humans have no resistance against.
Belgian authorities said on Saturday they had spotted a second possible outbreak of the disease in poultry.
Scientists stressed that preventative measures were in place, including guidelines for at-risk workers to take medication against bird flu and human flu. The veterinarian who died had not taken the anti-viral medication.
Transport restrictions have been introduced for pigs after several animals were found to have antibodies to bird flu, and millions of birds have been slaughtered.
Scientists at Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam identified the virus in the veterinarian's lungs as part of the same H7 family as the bird flu virus, Dr Albert Osterhaus, who heads the virology department, said.
Staff were now working on further "sequencing" to see whether any mutations had occurred, Osterhaus said.
"The doom scenario would be if animals or humans became infected with human and animal viruses and there was an exchange of genetic material," he said.
"The result would be a [new] virus against which there would be no immunity in the population."
The chances of this happening were small, however, and measures already in place should prevent it happening, he added.
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