Natures Corner

Croatia has started testing dead birds found by citizens for possible avian flu -- a sign of growing anxiety in the former Yugoslav republic, where no cases have been reported so far. Other European countries were also testing dead birds. No human cases have been reported in Europe, but the World Health Organization said it was worried European countries might divert funding and attention away from Southeast Asia. "There's a lot of anxiety (in Europe)," said Peter Cordingley, spokesman for the WHO in Manila. "Quite clearly, the result of this could be that governments might focus on domestic preparedness and forget the fact that ground zero is Southeast Asia." Swiss pharmaceuticals company Roche is donating packs of its anti-influenza drug Tamiflu to Turkey and Romania, the Wall Street Journal paper reported on Monday in its online edition. Cordingley said the feared mutation of the virus into a form that is easily transmitted between humans was most likely to take place in Southeast Asia, where millions of birds have been culled in an attempt to limit the disease's spread. The H5N1 strain first emerged in Hong Kong in 1997, when it caused the death or destruction of 1.5 million birds. Eighteen people fell ill, of whom six died. It re-emerged in 2003 in South Korea, and has now spread to China, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Indonesia, Turkey and Romania. H5N1 has infected 117 people in four countries and killed 60, according to the WHO. "SPARK IN A FOREST" Leavitt, who has said fighting the disease at the farm level was a top priority, said surveillance was vital. "If one thinks of the world as though it were a vast forest, if there is a spark in the forest and you are there to see it, you are able to simply snuff it out," Leavitt said. "However if it's allowed to burn for an hour or two hours, it often becomes uncontainable. The only thing possible then is to try to move people or assets out of its way." Earlier, Jakarta's Health Minister Siti Fadillah Supari said the United States would help Indonesia with laboratory upgrades, but was worried about urban concentrations of chickens. In the past week, Leavitt has travelled to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam to get information on the virus. The United States has pledged $25 million to the region for training, supplies, lab equipment, village-based surveillance systems and public education. British experts from the body that discovered the flu virus in 1933 will travel to southeast Asia to boost global cooperation on fighting bird flu and other new infections, the Medical Research Council said on Monday. The fight against bird flu in Asia is being hampered by huge differences in wealth between countries, experts say. Some countries still have no stockpiles of the expensive anti-viral drugs that could help limit a human pandemic and have poor public health infrastructure.