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in contrast to the doomsday predictions circulated far and wide by health agencies about avian influenza, birds are now back in Europe from Africa -- but without the bird flu pathogen.
With this, the reasons for the spread of the disease have, for the time, shifted away from the culpability of wild migratory birds. Even a recent meeting held jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization (fao) and the World Organization for Animal Health (oie) in Rome vindicated the wild birds.
The fao-oie meet hosted over 300 scientists from 100 countries, who deliberated virus ecology, surveillance of birds, sampling and analysis, human and domestic poultry risk, and disease management. But in the absence of proper knowledge about the virus and adequate research into the spread of the disease, scientists are not sure where to put the blame next -- even almost three years after the avian influenza re-appeared in Asia as a potential pandemic threat in late 2003, claiming at least 127 lives across the world.
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