LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Bird flu has made its way to almost every corner of the globe. First detected in China in 1996, it's spread across Asia and to to Europe and Africa. Catching a ride on migratory birds, it crossed the Atlantic Ocean and even turned up on Antarctica. In its wake, it has left what some describe as a global catastrophe, with mass die-offs of wild birds and marine mammals. But as NPR's Gabrielle Emanuel reports, there is one continent that bird flu has yet to reach.
GABRIELLE EMANUEL, BYLINE: It's spring in Australia. That means lots of migratory birds are showing up on the country's beaches. And Michelle Wille is busy trying to catch them.
MICHELLE WILLE: We often use a technique called cannon netting.
EMANUEL: Wille is a researcher at the University of Melbourne. Often, you'll find her on a beach scrunching up a massive net that she then attaches to small explosives that work like cannons.
WILLE: And then, you know, we all go and hide. And when the birds decide out of all the beach to sit in front of the net, then the net goes boom.
EMANUEL: The net flies open, spreads across the sand, trapping the birds.
WILLE: We catch birds and take swabs. And then I come to the lab, and I screen them for influenza viruses.
EMANUEL: So far, none of the birds have tested positive for H5N1. That's the type of bird flu that's been so deadly to wildlife. And researchers say it has the potential to spark a pandemic if it develops the ability to spread easily among humans.
WILLE: I'm never so happy as when I run samples and they're all negative.
EMANUEL: And yet she and her colleagues know that they may not be happy forever, especially now that there's a suspected case on one of Australia's far-flung islands near Antarctica. So Wille's team is doing what they can to plan for when and if H5N1 starts showing up on the mainland, in Australia's wildlife. But to plan, they need to know what's happening in other countries. And a lot of countries don't have good data on bird flu.
WILLE: So, you know, for us, we're like, well, where is it? We don't know.
EMANUEL: She says there are gaps in bird flu surveillance not far from Australia in parts of Asia, but also in the U.S., Antarctica, Africa. Laura Roberts is a state veterinarian for the Western Cape in South Africa. She says there have been almost no H5N1 alerts coming out of East Africa, for example.
LAURA ROBERTS: It's hard to believe that there's nothing happening.
EMANUEL: She says one reason it's harder to track the virus in Africa is that bird movement there isn't that predictable. Whereas in the northern hemisphere, bird migration follows long-established patterns.
ROBERTS: Your weather is so extreme, they have to move or they freeze to death.
EMANUEL: In Africa, birds tend to move based on rainfall and food, which is a lot less formulaic. So which birds interact and which viruses get swapped is not as easy to predict. Another big challenge? The finances. It's expensive to do bird flu surveillance, and it could hurt a country's economy. Theo Knight-Jones is a veterinary epidemiologist with the International Livestock Research Institute. He says some countries might know they have bird flu but not want to report it.
THEO KNIGHT-JONES: Because people will say, oh, you've got the disease, we're going to ban your exports.
EMANUEL: Which can have huge economic consequences. Knight-Jones says countries are expected to report cases to international animal health authorities, so...
KNIGHT-JONES: This is a very sensitive issue.
EMANUEL: He says if the international community isn't properly tracking the virus, it makes it hard for Australia to plan. But it also means the world may not be ready to respond if the virus starts to really take off in humans.
Gabrielle Emanuel, NPR News.
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