By Ed Davies JAKARTA, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Britain's first case of the H5N1 virus in domestic poultry is unlikely to pose much risk, but Europe should be ready for more outbreaks this winter, the U.N. bird flu envoy said Sunday. "I wouldn't be surprised if we see outbreaks in other European countries during the next few weeks and months," David Nabarro said in an interview after the highly pathogenic strain of the virus was found on a British turkey farm last week. Some 2,500 turkeys have died since Thursday at the Bernard Matthews farm near Lowestoft in eastern England and all 159,000 birds there are to be culled in the next few days. "It's a cause for concern but at the same time because the response is right I think the concern should be quite limited," Nabarro said. He said the fowl were likely to have been infected by wild birds, which can carry the virus without becoming sick. "It's incredibly difficult to completely insulate a bird farm from wild birds in the vicinity." Britain said the virus was the same pathogenic Asian strain found last month in Hungary, where an outbreak among geese on a farm prompted the slaughter of thousands of birds. That outbreak followed a relative lull in cases of H5N1 among European poultry since hundreds of turkeys died at a farm in east France about a year ago. There have been 271 confirmed bird flu cases in humans worldwide and 165 deaths since 2003, according to the World Health Organisation. Nabarro said news of the latest death, that of a 22-year-old Nigerian woman who was the first known human fatality from the H5N1 virus in sub-Saharan Africa, did not come as surprise. VIRUS CIRCULATING "We have been expecting that there may well be human cases in Nigeria because the amount of virus circulating in the poultry population is really very large," he said. He said the government had responded "energetically", but had not been able to bring the infection under control in poultry. The virus has spread to 17 of Nigeria's 36 states over the past year despite measures such as culling, quarantine and bans on transporting live poultry. "When the virus levels build up that's when we tend to see human cases." Many experts fear the H5N1 bird flu virus could eventually mutate into a form that would spread easily among humans and cause a pandemic that could possibly kill millions. In Africa, 11 people have died in Egypt from bird flu since 2003 and there has been a single non-fatal human case in Djibouti, in the eastern Horn. In the case of Indonesia, Nabarro said: "During the last month we've seen a heightened political concern about the nature of the problem and the wish to scale up the response." Bird flu has killed 63 Indonesians, the most fatalities of any country in the world. Six of the deaths came in January. He welcomed a move by the governor of Jakarta and other provinces to ban backyard fowl, but given the economic importance of fowl to poor Indonesians he said fair compensation was needed. Nabarro indicated he might be interested in moving to head a body combating diseases including AIDS. The Briton is considered the strongest of three shortlisted candidates to head the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, fund sources said on Thursday. "I'm very honoured to have been nominated. We'll just have to see what happens over the next days and weeks as to whether or not I do end up in that job."
