Bird flu fears widen

Western Europe is seeing a growing number of cases of H5N1 flu in wild birds that have migrated from the east, but new outbreaks in poultry in Africa threaten the hordes of birds heading north for the summer breeding season. Worries about the disease are likely to grow. The Tower of London's famous ravens are now, for the first time in 400 years, locked up inside the building. The move marks growing European fears about the prospect of the H5N1 bird flu, which has caused more than 90 human deaths, mostly in Asia, and is greatly feared as a potential source of the next human global flu pandemic. Europe is battening down the hatches on its poultry population in the face of the H5N1 infection of wild birds now recorded across the region. But news that birds in Africa have been confirmed with bird flu has added an extra dimension to the crisis. Bird flu in Africa has raised fears for experts that containing it will be a major problem on a continent where backyard chickens are the norm, health infrastructure is weak and many governments have little in the way of funding or plans to deal with an avian flu outbreak. In northern Nigeria, where bird flu began killing chickens last month, cheap chicken has flooded local markets. Poultry farm workers, faced with thousands of dead birds, are working without protective gear to throw them on open fires. And farmers, not yet certain what government compensation they will receive, remain reluctant to report dying birds. " If the situation in Nigeria gets out of control, it will have a devastating impact on the poultry population of the region. It will seriously damage the livelihoods of millions of people and will increase the exposure of humans to the virus, " warned Samuel Jutzi, director of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, which has sent experts to Nigeria to try to contain the outbreak there. Nigeria's new cases " prove that no country is risk-free and that we are facing a serious international crisis, " he said. International experts quickly confirmed that the H5N1 strain of bird flu has been identified on at least four poultry farms in three states of northern and central Nigeria. What is unclear is whether the deadly virus — also recently Lethal: Ostriches are culled in northern Nigeria amid new evidence that the deadly H5N1 …