Aussies urged to avoid chickens in Asia

• August 30, 2011 5:48PM

AUSTRALIANS travelling to South-East Asia are advised to avoid contact with live chickens following a UN warning about bird flu.

The UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation on Tuesday said there were signs that a mutant strain of H5N1 was spreading in Asia.

One person has died in August in Cambodia, where the infection has killed another seven people this year.

Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Laos are also susceptible, health experts say.

The World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza has urged Australians travelling to southeast Asia to be careful.

"They should avoid wet markets ... selling poultry or live birds," the centre's Melbourne-based deputy director Ian Barr said.

Dr Barr said the chance of catching bird flu in Asia was low "but not zero".

"I don't think we need to be unnecessarily alarmed by this," he said.

Still, Nobel-prize winner Professor Peter Doherty, from the University of Melbourne's department of microbiology and immunology, said a global bird flu pandemic was possible.

"This is a dangerous situation," the former Australian of the Year said in a statement.

"The continued exposure of humans and pigs could lead to the emergence of a mutant, or a reassorted H5N1 virus, that could spread between people and trigger a global pandemic."