A bird flu outbreak in Azerbaijan that has killed five young people seems to have stabilized, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, while Palestinians feared the virus has reached Gaza.

The five deaths from the H5N1 virus were the first in Azerbaijan, which lies on a crossroads between Europe and Asia.

The deaths took the known global human toll from bird flu to 103 in eight countries since late 2003.

Cristiana Salvi, spokeswoman for the WHO’s mission in Azerbaijan, said no new cases of human infection had been confirmed since the first week in March.

“These are not new cases arising,” she told Reuters. “This is very important because it means the situation seems to be stable.”

However, anxious Azeris have rushed to hospital for checks and a villager in one affected area said people were panicking over the virus.

The WHO’s Salvi added that there was no evidence to suggest human-to-human transmission - scientists’ worst case scenario that, if it happens, could lead to a global pandemic killing millions of people.

Scientists said on Wednesday they may have uncovered why bird flu has not been able to spread easily among humans.

It is because bird flu viruses attach to receptors, or molecules on cells, in different regions of the respiratory system from human influenza viruses. Humans have receptors for avian viruses but they are found deep within the lungs.

“For the viruses to be transmitted efficiently, they have to multiply in the upper portion of the respiratory system so that they can be transmitted by coughing and sneezing,” said Dr Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the research team.

Kawaoka and a team of researchers in Japan infected human tissue with bird flu viruses. Their findings suggest that strains of H5N1 circulating in birds would have to undergo several key genetic changes to move easily between humans.

BIRD FLU SPREAD

Bird flu has spread rapidly since late 2003 from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The United States fears it will arrive on its shores before year’s end.

Since the beginning of January, 30 countries have reported outbreaks, in most cases involving wild birds such as swans.

Palestinian officials said they had good reason to suspect the virus had killed around 30 chickens at a farm in an area close to the border with Israel, which is battling an outbreak at poultry farms.

The H5N1 virus has also been detected in neighboring Egypt where it has been blamed for the death of a woman.

A summit on bird flu in Africa said the world’s poorest continent needed at least three more veterinary laboratories and three more human health laboratories.

AZERIS RUSH TO HOSPITAL

There was anxiety among ordinary people in Azerbaijan, a mainly Muslim country of eight million people wedged between Russia, Iran and Turkey.

“People are nervous and they run to the hospital even when they just have a light cough,” said Myakhyabbat Ibrahimova, chief doctor at Baku’s hospital No. 7. Signs on the doors of the hospital said it was under quarantine.

The deaths occurred between February 23 and March 10. Four of the five victims were female.

WHO epidemiologists are looking into the possibility that the victims fell ill after plucking dead wild swans, a common practice in the region. The feathers are used in pillows.

The village at the center of the outbreak is so gripped by fear that local people refused to attend the victims’ funerals for fear of getting ill, a villager said.

Four of the victims were from the village of Daikend in the Salyan region of southern Azerbaijan. Two young women and a boy were members of the same extended family. A third girl was a family friend.

“No one went to the funerals of those girls,” said Ilham Salamov, who lives in Daikend and had come into the regional capital Salyan, about 20 km (13 miles) away.

“Everyone is afraid. There is panic in the village. Everyone is scared about bird flu.”