Officials are testing whether dead birds found in the Bahamas, a country located less than 60 miles from Florida, have lethal avian flu, the Pan American Health Organization said today. The results may be ready in four days.
The Bahamas Ministry of Agriculture and Marine Resources is collecting samples from the dead birds, found on the island of Inagua, about 300 miles from the main island of Nassau, said Sonia Mey, a spokeswoman for PAHO in Washington. Officials are testing to see whether the H5N1 virus has spread to the Western Hemisphere for the first time.
The Bahamas is comprised of a group of 700 islands extending 760 miles from the Florida coast. A finding that the virus has arrived there could be troublesome for a country in which tourism accounts for 40 percent of gross domestic product.
“This is just a case of unexplained deaths in birds and we are not excluding anything at this point in time,” said Yitades Gebre, adviser for disease prevention and control for the PAHO office in Nassau. “We are not panicking with the situation.”
PAHO officials said they are advising Bahamian health officials to send the samples to a U.K. lab for testing, which is just a nine-hour flight from Nassau. The branch of the World Health Organization is providing assistance to the Bahamas government in obtaining and assessing the samples.
Calls to Agriculture Minister Leslie Miller of the Bahamas weren’t returned. Bahamas Health Minister Bernard Nottage’s office referred calls to Public Health Director Baldwin Carey, who didn’t return several calls.
14 Countries
The H5N1 bird virus has already spread from Asia to the Middle East, Europe and Africa. It has appeared in 14 countries since the beginning of February, including Nigeria, Niger, Iraq, Egypt and India.
The virus has infected 174 people since late 2003, mainly through contact with birds. At least 94 of those patients have died, and researchers say if H5N1 gains the ability to spread quickly among people it could touch off a lethal, worldwide epidemic, or pandemic.
Gebre said Pan American Health Organization officials had been informed of the testing “at the highest level.” Health and agriculture agencies in the U.S. and Florida said they had no information about the testing.
“We advised authorities about the how to package the samples, where to send them, the need for personal protective equipment for the team and any necessary information on those areas,” Gebre said.
Testing Options
The other option for testing is a World Health Organization linked laboratory in Ames, Iowa, that would take longer to transfer samples to, he said.
The Bahamas government is handling all aspects of the collection of the tissue for testing, Gebre said. A two-person team of workers from the Bahamas health and agricultural ministries flew to the island this morning to begin collecting tissue for testing, he said.
The team is expected back tomorrow, and results could be available 24 to 48 hours after the samples arrive at the laboratory, Gebre said.
“We haven’t had contact with the Bahamas but we wouldn’t expect to,” said Terence McElroy, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Agricultural and Consumer Services. “They’ve simply found dead birds and there are birds that die all the time from all kinds of causes.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Department of Health and Human Services said they had not been contacted and were not involved, officials said.
By: John Lauerman
www.bloomberg.net
