Azerbaijan: A bird flu outbreak in Azerbaijan that has killed five young people seems to have stabilised, according to the World Health Organisation. Meanwhile Palestinians fear the virus has reached Gaza.
The five deaths from the H5N1 virus were the first in Azerbaijan, which lies on a crossroads between Europe and Asia. The deaths took the known global human toll from bird flu to 103 in eight countries since late 2003.
Cristiana Salvi, spokeswoman for the WHO's mission in Azerbaijan, said no new cases of human infection had been confirmed since the first week in March.
However, anxious Azeris have rushed to hospital for checks and a villager in one affected area said people were panicking.
Palestinian officials yesterday said they had good reason to suspect the virus had killed about 30 chickens at a farm in an area close to the border with Israel, which is battling an outbreak at poultry farms. The H5N1 virus has also been detected in neighbouring Egypt, where it has been blamed for the death of a woman.
Scientists said yesterday they may have found why bird flu has not been able to spread easily among humans. Bird flu viruses attach to receptors or molecules on cells, in different regions of the respiratory system from human influenza viruses. Humans have receptors for avian viruses but they are found deep within the lungs.
"For the viruses to be transmitted efficiently, they have to multiply in the upper portion of the respiratory system so that they can be transmitted by coughing and sneezing," said Dr Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the research team.
Dr Kawaoka and his team in Japan infected human tissue with bird flu viruses and found that strains of H5N1 in birds would have to undergo several key genetic changes to move easily between humans. - (Reuters)