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First cases of avian flu caught from wild birds
Four people who plucked feathers from H5N1 infected swans have died,
in the first confirmed cases of bird flu being passed to humans from wild
birds.
The victims, from a village in Azerbaijan, were plucking the feathers from
dead birds to sell for pillows. Three other people were infected by the swans
but survived.
The cluster of cases in Azerbaijan was first reported
in March, with six of the seven infected coming from the same family. The cause
of their infection was difficult to determine, as the victims initially denied
having any contact with potentially infected birds, because hunting and trading
wild birds and their products is illegal in the area. When the family admitted
that there had been contact with dead swans, further investigations revealed the
H5N1 virus.
Andreas Gilsdorf of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin,
who led the team that made the discovery, said: "As far as we know this is the
first transmission from a wild bird, but it was a very intensive contact. We
know that the virus is carried by swans and we know that you can catch the virus
if you have close contact, so it doesn't change anything, it's just the first
time it has been reported."
Almost all of the other confirmed human
cases of bird flu have been linked to infected domestic
poultry.
Editor WorldPoultry
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