'Bird flu epidemic stabilises'

The bird flu epidemic appears to have stabilised as far as humans go but several developing nations have not been able to stem its spread amongst poultry and domesticated birds, experts said Friday.
"The number of human cases of bird flu appears to be stable when compared to the same period last year," Gregory Hartl, World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesman for bird flu told AFP.
The UN health agency reported 56 new human cases of bird flu until July 25 this year, 34 of which were fatal. There were a total of 115 cases last year and 79 deaths. The World Health Organisation has so far recorded 319 cases of bird flu in humans world-wide, 192 of which were fatal.
"In the northern hemisphere, the number of cases in summer has declined marginally from the winter," Hartl said. Experts fear the death toll could rise sharply if the virus were to mutate and become easily transmissible between humans.
"Human to human transmission are very rare. We think there have been three cases - in Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia. And each time the person has had prolonged and direct contact with an affected person," Hartl said.
WHO head Margaret Chan recently said a fifth of the population in some of the affected countries could contract the potentially fatal H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus.
"From experience we do know that what we call the attack rate of a new pandemic would range - based on past experience it does not necessarily apply for the next pandemic - (to) roughly 20 percent or thereabout," Chan had said.
"If there's a ten million population, with 20 percent, two million would be affected at different stages. And then the severity of the disease would range from mild to severe," she added.
Meanwhile, the head of the World Organisation for Animal Health, Bernard Vallat, told AFP that the "presence of the virus is clearly lower among domestic birds this year when compared to the previous year."
But he warned of a "recrudescence of the virus among wild birds in Europe," and underlined that four of the 25 countries where avian influenza has been detected have not been "able to control the situation" and that the virus had turned "endemic." These four countries were Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt and Nigeria, Africa's most populated nation. Vallat said the levels of veterinary services were not up to scratch in Indonesia while lack of coordination and resources were hampering the fight against bird flu in the other three countries.