Fresh Outbreak of H5N1 Bird Flu in France

The extremely infectious H5N1 virus has shown its existence in some European countries this year, including Hungary, Britain, the Czech Republic, and most recently Germany and France. A new outbreak of H5N1 bird flu was found in three swans in a pond in eastern France, the French Agriculture Ministry confirmed Thursday.

The health authorities have set up a 2-kilometers control zone around the pond in Assenoncourt in the Moselle region after the dead birds tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus, France's first cases of the deadly disease in over a year.

The ministry urged the domestic fowl keepers in the affected zone to keep their animals indoors in order to protect them from wild birds. Officials also banned pigeon racing competitions and some other activities involving birds, increasing their bird flu threat level from "moderate" to "high".

"Michel Barnier, minister of agriculture and fishing, is putting in place the risk-prevention measures corresponding to the shift from the 'moderate' level to the 'high' level," the French ministry said in a statement.

France experienced a bird flu scare after an outbreak of the lethal H5N1 bird flu virus occurred last year in February in the eastern Ain region. However, it was quickly contained by the authorities who slaughtered survivors among the 11,000 turkeys and quarantined farms. Authorities had also launched vaccination campaign of fowl to control the disease.

Being Europe's biggest poultry producer, France has increased its precautions against bird flu after the virus was discovered late last month in several wild birds in Germany.

After a brief lull, H5N1 strain of bird flu in June had remerged in Germany. Health officials from the southern German city of Nuremberg confirmed on June 25 that eight dead birds discovered near two lakes in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg were infected with the highly pathogenic bird flu virus H5N1.

The bird flu virus had been discovered in the bodies of eight dead birds, the veterinary experts confirmed after examining the corpses of dead water-birds at the country’s top veterinary laboratory, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, on the island of Riems, marking the first cases of bird flu in Germany this year.

Nuremberg is located 120 kilometres from the border with the Czech Republic, where an outbreak of bird flu was also reported earlier last month. Czech veterinarians had started culling several thousand turkeys at the farm in the village of Tisova in the country's east after tests confirmed the country’s first outbreak of a deadly form of bird flu in poultry.

Concerned with the spread of virus, the German authorities on Thursday also raised the alert for bird flu from "moderate" to "high" after 38 more wild birds were tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain in eastern part of the country.

About 13 European Union member states, including Germany, Austria, Denmark, Italy, Greece, Britain, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, France and Hungary, last year, had confirmed cases of H5N1 bird flu virus.

So far, bird flu virus has killed 191 people out of the 313 cases reported, according to the World Health Organization. As of May 31st, 2007, the highest number of cases has been reported in Indonesia, where out of the 98 infected, 78 lost their lives.

H5N1, also known as A(H5N1), is a subtype of the Influenza A virus that is capable of causing illness in many animal species, including humans, while a bird-adapted strain of H5N1, called HPAI A(H5N1) for "highly pathogenic avian influenza virus of type A of subtype H5N1", is the causative agent of H5N1 flu, commonly known as "avian influenza" or simply "bird flu", and is endemic in many bird populations, especially in Southeast Asia.

The H5N1 virus though remains primarily a virus of birds, but experts fright that once it starts transmitting from person to person, it would sweep the world, leaving millions more to die and triggering a devastating human pandemic.

Ever since bird flu broke out and started spreading its notorious wings all over the globe, various measures have been taken by all the countries to protect their population. WHO, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) in collaboration with United States are looking into minimizing the risk of spreading of this disease and taking steps to avoid this to turn into a pandemic on a global level.