Pakistan urges safer culling after bird flu outbreak

By Alistair Scrutton

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan is urging provincial authorities to obey health guidelines to stop any bird flu outbreaks after fears lapses in poultry culling methods led to eight people being infected with the H5N1 virus.

The Health Ministry is sending out messages via radio and pamphlets to villages and farms in North West Frontier Province, where the eight people, including a veterinarian involved in culling, were infected in South Asia's first human cases.

The vet's brother died of bird flu. A third brother also died but it is unclear if he was also infected with the virus.

"These winter months are critical," Federal Health Secretary Khushnood Akhtar Lashari told Reuters on Thursday.

"We are asking provincial authorities to adhere to safely guidelines, but it is quite difficult because many of these places are in remote areas and many people have the attitude that 'it can't happen to me'."

Authorities now believe there is no threat of a pandemic from the bird flu cases in Pakistan as World Health Organisation experts carried out tests in the region.

But the H5N1 thrives best in winter months in part because people spend more time indoors and in close proximity to each other and their livestock.

Lashari said the man believed to have been infected first, a veterinarian who helped operations to cull chickens and who has now recovered, might have not worn a mask because he suffered from asthma.