Contemplating bird flu

Bird flu is carried by migratory birds. Though there are no known cases of the H5N1 strain among birds in North America, Alaska's location along the Pacific Rim migratory-bird path makes the state an "odds-on target" for the virus, said Dennis Brodigan, emergency services director.

"Alaska is as likely as any other place to get bird flu and maybe even more so," Brodigan said.

No human cases of the disease have been reported in Europe. But last week, a 48-year-old man from Thailand became the 67th person to die from the virus since 2003. Scientists fear that it might cause a pandemic if it mutates into a form capable of spreading from human to human.

Brodigan said Mat-Su officials will host a meeting later this fall with officials from the Municipality of Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula Borough. The group would work with the Alaska Department of Public Health and Epidemiology as well as local medical communities, law enforcement agencies and the military to formulate an initiative to identify and isolate a bird flu outbreak anywhere in Southcentral Alaska.

"Education, information and coordination through the tri-borough area is key. We have to look at the worst case scenario and work backwards on this," Brodigan said.

He said monitoring efforts are already under way. The Mat-Su Division of Animal Care and Regulation, in conjunction with the state, has tracked dead wild birds for about 2 1/2 years. They are packed up and sent to the state virology lab in Anchorage, where they are tested for avian viruses such as West Nile and bird flu.

In addition, biologists from University of Alaska Fairbanks have been collecting environmental samples from healthy bird populations on the North Slope since 2001, said Dr. Robert Gerlach, the state veterinarian. They're looking for a crossover of bird flu between the migratory birds in Asia and those in North America.

But wild birds are typically just carriers of the virus and often exhibit only mild symptoms, Gerlach said. The impact on infected domestic poultry, though, is usually dramatic and devastating. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2003 and 2004 more than 100 million birds in Asia either died from the virus or were killed to control the outbreak.

Earlier this month, the European Commission, on the advice of European Union health care and veterinary experts, advised farmers in some high risk regions to keep their poultry indoors. If H5N1 is detected in Alaska's wild bird population, Gerlach said, owners of domestic poultry here might be asked to do the same.

Anthony Schmidt, owner of Triple D Farm and Hatchery in Wasilla, said he'd be willing to keep his birds inside if bird flu made its way here.

"I would work tight with the state and the state vet and do whatever we had to do to keep it from getting much into Alaska. It's my livelihood," he said.

Schmidt sells an array of domestic fowl, including baby chicks, turkeys, geese and pheasants. In the winter, his inventory totals around 700 to 800. But in the spring and summer, he has as many as 3,500 birds at any one time.

Schmidt said most of his stock comes from hatcheries in the Lower 48. While he's not very worried about the threat of bird flu at this point, he said, he's cautious. He deals only with hatcheries that guarantee that all their birds are hatched and raised in the United States.

"If that flu ever did get here, it would probably destroy my business," Schmidt said.

Gerlach said the Office of the State Veterinarian and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are heading up surveillance efforts on Alaska's domestic poultry populations.

There is not much that a regulatory agency or the government can do to control the spread of bird flu in migratory birds, he said. But containing the virus in domestic poultry is easy and is the best way to prevent it from spreading to people.

"We need to be prepared and know the extent of the disease and have public health officials be prepared," Gerlach said.

Brodigan said planning is the best way to combat the spread of bird flu while the risk to Alaska is still minimal.

"Basically, we're trying to get ahead of the power curve," he said.

Daily News reporter Becky Stoppa can be reached at bstoppa@adn.com or 352-6708.