No threat of bird flu pandemic, says health ministry

Islamabad: Pakistan said yesterday there was no threat of a pandemic from bird flu, as World Health Organisation experts carried out tests in the country's northwest after eight people were infected by the virus.

Pakistani authorities confirmed the eight cases at the weekend, including one death.

The WHO said they were likely to be a combination of infections from poultry and limited human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 avian flu virus due to close contact.

The WHO says a similar case occurred in Indonesia in 2006 among family members believed to have contracted the virus while caring for sick loved ones.

"There is no threat of epidemic or pandemic and there are no fresh cases being reported," said Ministry of Health spokesman Orya Maqbool Jan Abbasi. The last human case was reported on November 23.

"I think we are safe, but we are very cautions and have taken all the precautionary measures."

A WHO report is due in the coming days, Abbasi said.

The man believed to have been infected first, a veterinarian who helped operations to cull chickens, recovered but his two brothers died.

One of his dead brothers tested positive for the virus. It was not clear if the other brother was infected with H5N1.

Six people have since recovered, while the remaining case is still being treated.

Hard for humans

The H5N1 virus is hard for humans to catch and is mainly a bird disease. But experts fear the strain could spark a global pandemic and kill millions if it mutates into a form that spreads easily between people.

Keiji Fukuda, coordinator of the WHO's global influenza programme said on Tuesday there was no immediate cause for alarm and the UN agency was not raising its level of pandemic alert for Pakistan for the time being.

"Right now it doesn't look like pure human-to-human transmission. It looks like the veterinarian, who was the index case, and a number of other suspect cases had poultry exposure."