Pakistan Next with Bird Flu?

Pakistan’s Minister for Agriculture and Livestock, Manzoor Panwar, says thousands of chickens in the south of the country have been killed by strains of bird flu since last November.

Pakistan’s Minister for Agriculture and Livestock, Manzoor Panwar, says thousands of chickens in the south of the country have been killed by strains of bird flu since last November.However, some Pakistani researchers are attributing the deaths of 3.5 million birds to the disease.Authorities in Pakistan claim that the two strains of bird flu killing chickens on farms around the southern port city of Karachi cannot infect humans.To date, there have been no reports of human infection in Pakistan.However, there is disagreement between experts over whether the deaths of 3.5 million chickens since last November can be blamed on bird flu or other diseases.Some poultry researchers claim that there is a rare chance that bird flu strains H7 and H9 could transform into the more fatal H5 strain of the disease.(Source: ABC Health News, Jan 2004)