As bird flu marches west across Russia toward Europe, health experts expressed optimism Wednesday that European countries could stamp it out before the virus takes hold and spreads among people.
"Will this make its way to Western Europe? I think most of us have no doubt," said Michael Osterholm, an expert on bird flu and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota in the US.
But he and other experts say that while the situation is worrisome, Europe is better equipped than Southeast Asia to quickly attack the disease that scientists fear could unleash a pandemic.
The scenario of a bird flu outbreak in Europe would be very different from that in Asia, said Juan Lubroth, an animal health expert with the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, one of the agencies responsible for tracking the virus.
It would not only be detected more quickly, he said, but people don't live in close quarters with animals, as they do in much of Southeast Asia.
The European poultry industry also is better able to shelter its birds from contact with the wild ducks blamed for the disease's spread. Italy and the Netherlands have previously stamped out outbreaks of bird flu.
Also, experts noted that the health care system is better able to deal with human exposure to bird flu and other animal-produced diseases.
"Theoretically, because it's going to be stopped in its tracks, it's not going to infect humans because of the quick detection, and therefore it would have less of a chance to become adapted to humans," Lubroth said.
On Wednesday, Russian veterinary workers incinerated thousands of birds in an intensified effort to stop the epidemic spreading across the Ural Mountains, which lie about 1,200km east of Moscow and divide the Asian part of Russia from the European side.
The Russian epidemic, first registered in western Siberia in July, has been blamed on two kinds of wild ducks -- mallard and pochard -- migrating from Southeast Asia, ministry spokesman Sergei Vlasov said.
The country's public health chief warned this week that the virus could reach the Black Sea and Caspian Sea regions later this year -- and from there move to the Middle East and Mediterranean, and speed through European Russia by spring.
The danger to the European poultry industry could be substantial. The larger worry is that the virus could mutate into a form that is both deadly to humans and easily spread between people.
Most flu pandemics originate from bird flu viruses. While the virus currently ravaging poultry in Asia has killed people there, it has not spread among them.
Osterholm noted that each time the virus passes from one bird to another presents another opportunity for it to mutate.
"This is genetic roulette," he said. "Every bit of spread just adds that much more potential for a mutation to occur that results in a strain that would be more readily transmitted between humans."
Scientists are monitoring the migratory bird pathways that cross from Siberia, over Western Europe to Africa.
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