European Panic Stirs Over Bird Flu Cases

by Julio Godoy

(IPS) BERLIN -- Alarm and a run on anti-flu medications are taking off across Europe after the first cases of avian influenza in poultry and other birds were confirmed in Romania, Greece and Turkey, and suspected in the Balkan countries.

Physicians, pharmacists and other health experts across Europe are confirming the beginnings of a public panic.

"In the last couple of days, I have received dozens of worried patients in my clinic who fear being infected with bird flu," says Dorothea Assenov, a doctor in Neukoelln, a low-income district in southeast Berlin.

In an interview with IPS, Assenov said colleagues from all over Berlin tell the same story. "And in the pharmacies, all medications against colds and flu are sold out," she added.

"In the serious cases of elderly people who are really ill with the flu, I have to call friends in pharmacies to ask them to deliver medications. Otherwise, you can't get anything anymore," Assenov said.

Similar reports are coming from Paris. The French are heading to pharmacies to buy remedies, especially Tamiflu, which is supposed to prevent avian influenza in humans, and are storing them at home, doctors and other health experts told IPS.

The run on flu medications grew this week, after French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin gravely warned that "France is not protected from avian influenza."

Addressing the French national parliament, De Villepin said the main vector of the disease is migratory birds. He announced that a special preventive plan has already been put in place, including stocking hospitals with 200 million masks and 14 million flu vaccine units by the beginning of next year.

Another 40 million vaccine doses have been ordered, De Villepin added.

Additionally, he said, the government is stepping up monitoring efforts in French regions where migratory birds usually stop during the northern hemisphere autumn season on their way south. Poultry farms will also be under increased scrutiny.

So far, the human toll of bird flu has been 60 people, all in Southeast Asia, where the epidemic erupted in late 2003. The disease has expanded among avian species across Southeast and Central Asia, and reached the Ural Mountain region in late July 2005, killing millions of poultry and other birds along the way.

European experts warned during the boreal summer that migratory birds flying from Central Asia toward the temperate regions of the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa could become the main transporters of the virus H5N1.

Other health experts warned that the illegal trade in wildlife species also poses a great risk.

Following these warnings, European governments established protective measures to prevent poultry from coming into contact with migratory birds.

In the Netherlands, the government issued a ban on Aug. 22 against outdoor farming of poultry intended for human consumption. A European Union (EU) general import ban on birds, feathers and avian-related items from the regions where the virus has been detected has also been in force since August.

The German government on Tuesday extended its order that poultry be housed indoors, in effect since Sept. 1, to most of the country. In cases where indoor protection is not possible, nets and fences must be used.

After the virus H5N1 was verified in dead poultry and other birds in Romania and Turkey earlier in October, the EU decided to extend the ban on poultry imports to these countries as well.

At the same time, health experts in Berlin are warning that the panic breaking out could be counterproductive, for it could exhaust vaccine and medication stocks.

The Robert Koch Institute, a health research center specializing in infectious diseases, and the Paul Ehrlich Institute, specializing in vaccine research, suggested that vaccines be given first to high-risk patients, such as people suffering chronic lung diseases and the elderly.

In addition, personnel in hospitals and clinics should also be given priority in a vaccination campaign, according to the institutes.

"We are already facing difficulties in the production of vaccines," Johannes Loewer, president of the Paul Ehrlich Institute, said in a press conference. "The last 4 million units of vaccine will be available only at the beginning of November," he added.

However, Loewer noted that the flu season in Germany usually breaks late in the year, around Christmas and the New Year. "Right now there are no grounds for panic," he said.

Susane Glasmacher, spokeswoman for the Robert Koch Institute, said that bird flu "does not threaten the whole of the population," and stressed that the spread of the disease to humans has happened only under special circumstances.

The contagion happened either through repeated direct contact with infected animals, or in zones highly contaminated with the virus H5N1. Person-to-person infection so far has not been reported, Glasmacher said.

Despite all these explanations, the alarm in Europe has not receded. In Italy, two first division football clubs, Bologna and Udinese, announced Tuesday that due to the avian influenza cases detected in Turkey, Greece, and Romania, they were withdrawing all poultry products from the food menus offered in their stadiums.

Italy's Health Minister Francesco Storace sharply criticized the measures, calling them "an incredible stupidity" that convey "a devastating message of fear."

Bernard Vallat, director general of the World Organization for Animal Health, described the atmosphere reigning in Europe as "psychotic."

In an interview with the French financial newspaper Les Echos, Vallat said, "Statements about the outbreak of a world pandemic of avian influenza in no way match with the scientific knowledge."

Vallat recalled that different forms of influenza have existed for centuries. "If anything, the risks of a pandemic have been present all along."

The alarm has apparently been fueled by business interests. Several Internet firms have put up anti-flu medications, such as Tamiflu, for auction.

One of these Web sites announces, "Stocks (of Tamiflu) dwindling! Order now!"

A well-known Internet auction site announced in London that it was closing down one of these auction offers, stating that its policy forbids sales of medications that require a physician's prescription.