WHO Says Bird Flu Virus Mutated

By Margie Mason

A World Health Organization investigation showed that the H5N1 virus mutated slightly in an Indonesian family cluster on Sumatra island, but bird flu experts insisted Friday it did not increase the possibility of a human pandemic.

The virus that infected eight members of a family last month - killing seven of them - appears to have slightly mutated in a 10-year-old boy, who is then suspected of passing the virus to his father, the WHO investigative report said.

It is the first evidence indicating that a person caught the virus from a human and then passed it on to another person, said Tim Uyeki, an epidemiologist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He said the H5N1 virus died with the father and did not pass outside the family.

“It stopped. It was dead end at that point,” he said, stressing that viruses are always slightly changing and there was no reason to raise alarm.

Dr. William Schaffner, a bird flu expert at the Vanderbilt University, called the mutation “noteworthy but not worrisome.” Generally it takes a series of mutations in a bird flu virus to raise the danger of a pandemic in humans, he said in a telephone interview.

Schaffner said it is remarkable that scientists were able to discover a mutation that occurred in a remote village in Indonesia. That’s the result of intense surveillance linked with “21st-century laboratory virology,” he said. “That’s awesome.”

The findings appeared in a report obtained by The Associated Press that was distributed at a closed meeting in Jakarta attended by some of the world’s top bird flu experts.

The three-day session that wrapped up Friday was convened after Indonesia asked for international help. The country has experienced an explosion of human bird flu cases this year and is on pace to become the world’s hardest-hit nation with 39 deaths.

The government said it needed $900 million over the next three years to fight the virus, which is ravaging poultry stocks across the archipelago. Health experts urged full implementation and funding of its national bird flu plan.

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