HONG KONG, July 7 (UPI) -- Hong Kong scientists have admitted publicly what they have worried about privately: Asia may never be free of bird flu and it may soon spread to humans.
The warning came as China, Thailand and Vietnam all found chickens dying of the disease again in the past week, the International Herald Tribune reported Wednesday.
Hans Wagner, senior animal production and health officer in southeast Asia for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, said he was not surprised bird flu was back, given its broad spread earlier this year and the many wild birds that were infected then.
"The geographic distribution and the incidence were so high," he said, "you will never be able to eradicate it from wildlife."
A World Health Organization official also said the agency was investigating an unconfirmed media report a person died of bird flu in Vietnam's Mekong Delta recently.
The reemergence of the virus coincides with an article in Nature, a British science journal, by Chinese researchers who say bird flu is firmly rooted in domesticated ducks in southern China -- and that the possibility of mutations raise the specter of a human bird flu pandemic.
