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Malaysia, Hungary join nations reporting bird flu

Bird flu maintained its relentless march across the globe yesterday with Malaysia and Hungary the latest countries to report outbreaks, while in India hundreds of people turned up at medical camps in flu-hit areas.

At least 15 nations have reported outbreaks in birds this month, an indication that the virus, which has killed more than 90 people, is spreading faster.

Migratory birds are thought to be at least one way the disease is being carried and more than 30 countries have now reported cases since 2003, seven of them recording human infections.

Bosnia confirmed its first cases of bird flu on Monday, while Malaysia said the H5N1 avian flu virus killed chickens near the capital. Tests also confirmed the virus in three dead swans found in Hungary last week, the government said yesterday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that mutations in the H5N1 virus are seemingly making it more deadly in chickens and more resistant in the environment, but without yet increasing the threat to humans.

"Human infections remain a rare event. The virus does not spread easily from birds to humans or readily from person to person," the WHO said on its Web site.

But scientists say the virus has already developed the ability to infect more species of animals and the fear is H5N1 could eventually mutate to pass easily from human to human.

Health workers in western India expanded a massive slaughter of chickens yesterday to contain the virus, while Malaysia began killing birds after reporting its first case of the disease in more than a year.

Indonesia, meanwhile, geared up to scour its capital to test thousands of chickens for the illness, and Hong Kong's government said a dead magpie found near an urban flower market was infected with the H5N1 strain.

More than half a million birds have been killed in India's Navapur district since the virus was found in samples from some of the 30,000 chickens that had died recently. The government had planned to cull a total of 700,000 birds within a 3km radius of the outbreak in Maharashtra state.

Yesterday, Indian authorities said they planned to widen the culling area.

"We don't want to take any chances," said Anees Ahmed, a Maharashtra state official.

The expanded radius of the cull was expected to lead to the slaughter of about 100,000 more birds, said a state official who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to release the information.

Local farmers were distraught over their losses and wondering how they would survive.
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