By Evelyn Leopold UNITED NATIONS, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Bird flu, transmitted last season by migrating wild birds, is increasingly spread through the poultry trade, a U.N. expert said. David Nabarro, the U.N. coordinator for avian and human flu, told a news conference on Friday that the migrating birds carried the virus, probably from Mongolia to China and South Korea. But he said this season's wave of avian flu was largely passed through the poultry trade. "We suspect that one of the reasons for the current spread has more to do with trade in live birds than to do with the movement of the virus through wild birds," Nabarro said. But he did not exclude chance infections, such as bird feathers on the hands of people and water that infected birds have paddled through. In addition to trade "we should also add the possibility of chance infection-- trade plus rather than just trade," Nabarro said. Since late last year, outbreaks of avian flu have been confirmed in Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea, Thailand, China, Japan, Egypt, Nigeria, Hungary and Britain as well as an unconfirmed report in Turkey. But there have been no confirmed outbreaks in North and South America. The World Health Organization has registered 272 cases of the virus in humans and 166 deaths since 2003. But the fear is "that a mutation could occur that makes it suddenly capable from being transmitted from human to human and causes a pandemic," Nabarro said. "We expect that there will more more outbreaks," especially during the northern winter season, from November to June, he said. Nabarro, who just returned from Indonesia, was asked about Jakarta's decision not to share bird flu virus samples with foreign laboratories until the World Health Organization has rules to ensure they are not used commercially and are too expensive for poor nations. "I hope those concerns can be resolved quickly," he said. "The one absolute requirement for public health is total transparency" so the "international scientific community can understand what is happening to the virus." Nabarro said that without immediate medical help, those infected would die quickly and he feared poor nations would have limited health resources. Funds were needed to compensate those who have to kill poultry and find another livelihood. "In an effort to control the avian virus in countries that are very heavily affected, mass culling of birds, particularly among poorer people, can have really dramatic social, economic and nutritional consequences," Nabarro said.
