By Bruno Waterfield - 24th February 2006
Children will be warned not to play with or near wild birds, such as ducks, as avian flu fear sweeps Europe, the Austrian EU presidency warned on Friday.
Austria, current holders of the EU presidency and a country hit by H5N1 in wild birds, is providing public information for citizens.
Friday’s emergency meeting of EU health ministers has agreed to push national and in future Europe-wide information campaigns.
Austrian health minister Maria Rauch-Kallat stressed that “targeted” advice for citizens was needed to help prevent the avian virus crossing to humans and sparking a human flu pandemic.
Groups including, hunters, vets, poultry workers or animal welfare workers will be cautioned against contact with sick wild or domestic birds.
The dangerous H5N1 virus – that can be spread to humans from birds but not between people – has arrived in the EU on the wings of migrating swans, geese and ducks.
Children especially, Rauch-Kallat noted, are “at risk” while feeding, playing with or near wild birds such as ducks they may not realise are infected with the virus.
“A wild bird that can be caught, it must be a sick bird,” she warned. “At the same time we need to tell children, playing alongside bodies of water, that contact with faecal matter is not allowed.”
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has issued advice for parents concerned over bird flu.
“Warn your children against touching dead or sick birds and discourage them from playing with birds,” cautions the official advice.
An ECDC spokesman said that children most at risk were those living in households that kept backyard flocks of poultry.
Other groups are less at risk but, the ECDC warns, all parents should warn children against touching birds.
“Kids feeding ducks should not touch them or pick up any sick or dead birds. Throwing bread, though, should not bring them into contact,” he said.
It is possible for humans to catch the H5N1 virus through close contact with live infected birds.
Birds excrete the virus in their faeces, which when dry can become pulverised and infect humans when dust is inhaled.
WHO figures show 169 human cases of H5N1 in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, China, Turkey and Iraq, leading to 91 deaths.
The Austrian health minister suggests that there is an “information deficit” among that may abet the spread of the dangerous virus to domestic poultry and humans.
She cited an Austrian animal refuge, where a sick swan had transmitted avian flu to other birds in the shelter, triggering a cull.
“A private animal shelter in Graz admitted a wild swan without taking any safety measures at a time the media was reporting dead swans in the area,” she said.
But EU governments and officials are quick to insist, amid collapsing poultry meat and egg sales in some countries, that products are safe.
“There is no reason not to eat chicken. It is absolutely safe,” said Rauch-Kallat.
European health and consumer protection commissioner Markos Kyprianou stressed that information campaigns should not lead to scares.
“There is no reason to panic but we have to take measures for prevention, he said of Friday.
An outbreak of avian flu among 11,000 turkeys on a French farm in the Ain region – near where a dead duck was found to be infected with H5N1 - has not yet been confirmed as the dangerous N1 variant of the H5 bird virus.
Special surveillance measures and protection zones have been set up to check vehicles and to ensure that no poultry or other captive birds leave the region.
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