Health, Safety and Environment

Avian Influenza or "Bird Flu" – Called H5N1

17 February 2006

The following is issued by the CWU, following contact with the TUC, HSE, HPA and other organisations. The CWU has also contacted BT and Royal Mail.

In response to a number of queries regarding Avian flu the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has stated that at the moment there are no known cases of human to human infection and the only risk is likely to be to workers who are in close contact with infected birds or their carcasses.

The National Farmers Union also stressed that the flu virus was an avian disease and even though it is the human H5N1 strain that has been identified, it is primarily a disease that infects birds and humans have to be in very close contact for a great amount of time for it to be passed on. UK farmers had redoubled their bio-security measures because of what had happened in Romania and Turkey. That included measures such as keeping the areas around poultry enclosures clean and washing clothes, vehicles and boots.

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) is the UK leading authority on Avian Flu. A recent cluster of cases of Avian flu have been confirmed in a rural part of eastern Turkey by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the WHO and the European Union have sent a specialist team to Turkey to assist with the investigation of the cluster. The HPA have stressed that although these are the first cases of Avian flu in humans outside East and South East Asia, it is important to stress that Avian flu still remains a disease in poultry and that almost all human cases confirmed to date have had close contact with infected poultry and the human cases in Turkey follow outbreaks of the disease in poultry in Eastern Europe in recent months. The HPA state that this is not the start of a pandemic and the risk to the UK remains very low. They add that the risk to people travelling to Turkey remains low but travellers to the area are reminded to avoid close contact with poultry.