Wild birds cause bird flu new research released

First avian flu deaths from wild birds

David Adam and James Meikle, London
June 27, 2006

FOUR people have died after catching bird flu from swans.

The deaths, just revealed by German scientists, happened earlier this year. They were the first confirmed cases of avian flu being passed from wild birds.

The victims, from a village in Azerbaijan, are believed to have caught the lethal H5N1 virus when they plucked dead swans to sell the feathers for pillows. Three other people infected by the swans have survived.

Andreas Gilsdorf, an epidemiologist at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin, who led the team that made the discovery, said: "As far as we know this is the first transmission from a wild bird, but it was a very intensive contact.

"We know that the virus is carried by swans and we know that you can catch the virus if you have close contact, so it doesn't change anything, it's just the first time it has been reported."

Some ornithologists and conservation experts have tried to play down the role that wild birds could play in spreading the disease. The UN's Convention on Migratory Species organised a "world migratory bird day" in April, which it said came "at a time when migratory birds were being unfairly portrayed as harbingers of death and disease".

Almost all of the 220 other confirmed human cases of bird flu, including 130 deaths, have been linked to infected domestic poultry. A handful are believed to have caught the disease directly from infected humans.

The cluster of cases in the Salyan district of Azerbaijan, 144 kilometres south-east of Baku, was first reported in March. Six of the seven victims, all aged between 10 and 20, were from the same family.

Relatives initially denied any contact — hunting and trading wild birds and their products is illegal — but eventually admitted that the victims had plucked the feathers from dead swans, among a large number that died in February.

GUARDIAN