March 21 (Bloomberg) -- Hundreds of dead birds found on a poultry farm in southern Cameroon may signal bird flu is spreading in the West African nation. A third person in Egypt is reported to have been tested for the lethal virus.

About 240 dead birds were found in the coastal town of Limbe, near the Nigerian border and several hundred kilometers from the northern town of Maroua, where Cameroon's first outbreak was confirmed in a duck, the United Nations Integrated Regional Information Network reported yesterday. Agriculture Minister Aboubakary Sarki is visiting northern provinces to review control measures, the report said.

Twenty new outbreaks in poultry of the H5N1 avian influenza strain were reported to the World Organization for Animal Health in the week ending March 16, boosted by infections on farms in Nigeria and Romania. The disease in poultry raises the risk of human cases and creates opportunities for the virus to mutate into a pandemic form that may kill millions of people.

``Nations are dealing with this on their own because of fears of an impact on trade,'' said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. ``We continue to see situations where nations are not as aggressive as they could be off the bat.''

Since 2003, H5N1 has killed at least 98 of 177 people infected, the WHO said on March 13. The human toll from avian flu may increase as results on tests from suspected fatalities in Egypt and Azerbaijan are reported this week.

France, Romania

France reported a new H5N1 infection in a wild duck in the Ain region, near the border with Switzerland. France had its first outbreak of the disease in birds last month.

In Romania, several domestic hens in Magurele, 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of the capital Bucharest, tested positive for the H5 subtype of bird flu after health authorities sampled poultry in the area. Authorities are testing to see whether the virus is the H5N1 type that can infect humans.

More chickens also tested positive further east, in Grivita, Ialomita county, the Agriculture Ministry said today in an e-mailed statement. Romanian authorities culled more than 300,000 domestic birds since reporting the country's first bird flu outbreak in October. No cases among humans have been reported in the country of 21.5 million inhabitants.

Israel last week became the 29th country this year to report an initial H5N1 outbreak in either wild birds or fowl.

Israel, Nigeria

The H5N1 virus was confirmed by a U.K. laboratory as the killer of fowl on two farms in Pakistan's North West Frontier province, said Rana M. Akhlaq, the country's deputy commissioner for animal husbandry. Initial tests on samples from the fowl, which died a month ago, showed they had an H5 avian-flu subtype.

In Nigeria, Africa's most-populous country, the virus spread to the southwestern state of Lagos, said Abdulsalami Nasidi, head of the Nigerian health task force charged with coordinating efforts to halt the spread of the virus. The affected farm was close to the Ogun state border and the virus hasn't been found near the city of Lagos, where about 11 million people live, since H5N1 was first reported in Nigeria six weeks ago, he said.

``It seems to be spreading by the movement of birds by human beings,'' Nasidi said by telephone from the national capital Abuja today. Officials are expected to release an update of the avian flu situation in Nigeria tomorrow, he said.

Egyptian Cases

A third Egyptian may have been infected with H5N1, Agence France-Press reported, citing Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali.

The Ministry of Health in Egypt confirmed the country's first human avian flu fatality, a 30-year-old woman who died near Cairo on March 17. Samples from the woman tested positive by the U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit based in Cairo.

Samples are being sent abroad for diagnostic verification and further analysis by a WHO laboratory, the WHO said.

More human cases are expected to be found in Egypt, the government said in a statement on its Web site, citing Ibrahim el-Kirdani, a WHO spokesman. The virus has sickened birds in 18 of Egypt's 26 regions.

The H5N1 virus already is changing into more variations with genetic characteristics that increase the risk of infection in humans, according to a U.S. government study.

Researchers are finding more human cases of the disease caused by one of the variants that had only been seen in birds before 2005, said Rebecca Garten, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientist, who led the study. The research was presented yesterday at the International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases in Atlanta.

``The genetic evolution we're observing is very worrisome. The threat is real,'' Benjamin said. ``It's already a pandemic in birds.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Jason Gale in Singapore at j.gale@bloomberg.net; Kristen Hallam in London at khallam@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 21, 2006 06:45 EST