MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

First case of H5N1 bird flu in Africa

A deadly strain of bird flu has been discovered on a poultry farm in northern Nigeria, health officials said Wednesday, marking the virus's first known appearance in Africa.

A "highly pathogenic" form of the H5N1 virus has killed 40,000 birds in the rural Nigerian state of Kaduna, according to the World Organization for Animal Health, a United Nations agency. No humans have been infected, the agency said.

The announcement confirmed predictions that the virus, which has turned up in the Middle East and Eastern Europe in recent months, eventually would land in Africa, the region that experts fear might be the most vulnerable to a bird flu pandemic.

Millions of Africans live in close proximity to animals, and the continent's health systems lack the capacity to control an outbreak. Nigeria is particularly at risk because of its large commercial poultry industry. Millions of Nigerians raise birds in their backyards, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

Bird flu rarely infects humans, but close contact with sick birds increases the chances of people catching it. Health experts are concerned that the virus will mutate into a strain that passes easily between people, sparking a global pandemic.

The H5N1 virus has killed at least 88 of the 165 people known to have been infected with it. Nearly all those cases have been in East Asia, though deaths have been recorded recently in Turkey and northern Iraq.

The U.N. agency said Nigerian authorities had killed and disposed of the infected birds and had quarantined the area. The agency said it would send experts to provide assistance.

The first case of H5N1 bird flu in Africa is likely to be followed quickly by others, creating a "very severe situation", the UN's top expert says.

"If the situation in Nigeria gets out of control, it will have a devastating impact on the poultry population in the region, it will seriously damage the livelihoods of millions of people and it will increase the exposure of humans to the virus," Samuel Jutzi, the organization's director of animal production and health, said in a statement.