Bird Flu In India

By Krittivas Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India quarantined six people in hospital on Monday and began a door-to-door search for anyone with fever as authorities scrambled to contain the country's first outbreak of bird flu.

In Europe, officials urged people to carry on eating poultry meat despite outbreaks of the lethal H5N1 bird flu strain, saying European Union authorities had the means available to wipe out the disease.

A string of EU countries have now confirmed H5N1 in wild birds, knocking consumer confidence in poultry meat -- especially chicken. But the EU farm chief rejected requests from member states to support poultry prices saying the situation had not yet become sufficiently severe.

"We have the measures and legislation for containment and eradication of such diseases," EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou told journalists in Brussels.

As bird flu continued its relentless march into the heart of Europe from Asia, at least 11 nations worldwide reported outbreaks over the past three weeks, an indication that the virus, which has killed at least 92 people, is spreading faster.

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.

The changes, which all viruses undergo, have affected patterns of transmission amongst domestic poultry and wild birds, with ducks, for example, developing the ability to pass the virus on without getting ill.
"They have not, however, had any discernible impact on the disease in humans, including its modes of transmission," the WHO said in a statement posted on its Web site (www.who.int).

India's Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said the situation was "under control" and there were no human cases of avian flu in the country despite fears at the weekend that a farmer had succumbed to the disease.