Originally published February 15 2006
Animal experts say springtime increases the risk of bird flu infections in European states
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Thomas Mettenleiter, president of Germany's leading animal disease center, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, identified March and April as the two months that pose the greatest risk of bird flu infections to European countries, as that is the time that migratory flocks that have mingled with Asian birds will return to Europe.
ISLE OF RIEMS, Germany - No one is worried about the traditional Christmas goose in Europe this year, but health officials are scrambling to prepare for what some believe is the certain arrival this spring of a deadly strain of bird flu in migrating wild birds.
Europe first saw the deadly H5N1 bird flu strain this autumn, with cases discovered among dead wildfowl or small flocks of domestic birds in Croatia, Romania, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine.
Thomas Mettenleiter, the president of Germany's leading animal disease center, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, said millions of wild birds left Europe flu-free this autumn to winter in Africa.
There they'll mix with migrating birds from Southeast Asia, where the lethal strain of the virus is far more common.
Of the ways the disease could arrive in Europe - through infected meat, live poultry or pets - migration is the most troubling.
The European Union issued a directive Tuesday urging nations to deal aggressively with low-threat strains of the virus.
Investigations should be launched whenever a suspicion of infection arises, it said.
Millions of birds died or were culled.
Since then, the lethal virus has jumped to humans in 141 cases, resulting in 73 deaths, according to the World Health Organization on Friday.
Currently, the flu passes from infected birds into humans through extended contact.
Flu has the ability to "gene-swap," or essentially trade genetic coding.
So the H5N1 strain could turn a nonlethal strain that spreads easily among humans into a lethal one.
A vaccine would greatly decrease the number of deaths from bird flu, but a human vaccine isn't possible until the precise mutation that's passing among humans is known, and that hasn't developed yet.
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