Bird flu experts from UN agencies arrived in Nigeria yesterday to help authorities step up their response to an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain, which is decimating poultry and endangering people.

The virus broke out in January in Africa?s most populous country, but lab tests did not confirm the presence of H5N1 until Feb. 8 and authorities have been slow to implement culling and quarantine measures that would help contain the outbreak.

The H5N1 strain has been confirmed on four farms in the northern Nigerian states of Kano and Kaduna and the central state of Plateau.

But several other states have reported suspected outbreaks several hundred kilometres from the four farms, raising fears that the disease is spreading at great speed.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) were mustering teams of international experts to head out into the field, where many people are unaware of bird flu and have been handling sick and dead birds.

?Their area of expertise is veterinary medicine. They are going to combine with medical doctors to make sure that all measures to avoid contamination of humans are in place,? said the FAO representative in Nigeria, Helder Muteia.

This will be a major challenge in an environment where poultry are everywhere ? in village backyards, city streets, by the side of the road, in crowded markets, on buses. As in much of Africa, most poultry is bought live and slaughtered at home.

So far, little information on bird flu has trickled out to the impoverished rural areas where chickens are dying. Farmers and villagers have been using their bare hands to toss dead birds onto fires, while children have been handling them.

Safety messages

The WHO said it had six experts already in the field in Nigeria and more on their way into the country.

The agency has been using a polio immunisation campaign to get safety messages out into villages. ?Whichever house we enter, we have been telling the villagers that if they come into contact with chickens they should wash their hands before cooking,? said Mohammed Momoh, a WHO field worker in Kaduna state who is on the polio campaign.

The Nigerian outbreak of H5N1 is the first known appearance in Africa of the strain, which has killed at least 88 people in Asia and the Middle East.

Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that can pass easily between humans. This could cause a global pandemic that could kill millions of people.

No human case of bird flu has been confirmed in Nigeria so far. Tests are being carried out on two children who developed flu-like symptoms at the same time as their parents? flock of fowl died suddenly. The children have since recovered.

Detecting any human case will be difficult because mortality rates from other diseases are high and health services are almost non-existent in rural Nigeria. People are often buried without any medical check.

Thousands of chickens have died of suspected bird flu on a farm in the far northern state of Katsina which is just a few kilometres away from the border with Niger.

Several African countries, including Niger, have banned imports of Nigerian poultry in an effort to prevent H5N1 from appearing in their territories but the bans will be difficult to implement because of long, poorly-controlled borders.

Estelle SHIRBON