Black Sea, Mideast States Step up Bird Flu Checks
Date: 11-Jan-06
Country: BULGARIA
Author: Michael Winfrey
Flanked by Turkey and Romania on the Black Sea, Bulgaria said it had put veterinarian and border officials on high alert.
"We are preparing as if for a war," Simeon Yotovski, director of the regional veterinary office of Rousse on Bulgaria's Danube border with Romania.
"Inspectors are hand checking the luggage of everyone entering Bulgaria. All cars are being sprayed with disinfectant and any poultry products are being confiscated and burnt."
The virus has killed three people in eastern Turkey and has infected another dozen. To the north in Romania, it has swept through domestic poultry flocks in dozens of villages around the Danube river delta although no human cases have emerged.
Officials in Greece and Georgia, which also border Turkey, said they were taking similar measures. Ukraine, which has reported outbreaks among poultry in the Crimea region, said it had stepped up monitoring at its Black Sea ports.
Most of the countries lie on the Pontic migratory route, by which wild birds travel south from Scandinavia and Siberia to northern Africa for the winter.
Scientists say wild birds have carried the virus to the Black Sea region from east Asia. H5N1 has killed at least 76 people since 2003 and experts now fear it could possibly spread to people in mainland Europe.
MIGRATING VIRUS
Despite the spread of human infections in Turkey, Bulgaria said the greatest risk came from birds still moving south from the Danube delta, Europe's largest wetlands.
The victims of bird flu contract the disease from close contact with infected poultry. There are fears it could mutate into a form which passes easily from person to person, unleashing a pandemic.
"For now, our expectation is that if bird flu appears, it would be caused by the flight of migratory birds coming from the north around the Black Sea," Agriculture Minister Nihat Kabil told reporters.
Following reports of unwillingness to report outbreaks in poultry in other countries, Bulgaria said it would pay farmers twice the market value of their domestic birds in the event they had to be culled.
Romania's agriculture ministry said it had intensified surveillance on birds and domestic animals around affected areas and was monitoring people entering and leaving the country.
Many countries bordering Turkey urged people to keep away from birds and wash their hands to prevent infection. Officials in Armenia and Britain asked travellers to avoid areas in the country where outbreaks had occurred.
"I don't think it would be advisable to travel to the eastern parts of Turkey or to enter parts of known infection," Professor Colin Blakemore, the chief of Britain's Medical Research Council, told the BBC.
Iran has imposed tight controls on its border with Turkey, banning one-day trips to Turkey from its Bazargan border area.
It has also joined the rest of Turkey's neighbours in banning its poultry imports, raising concern among the public.
"I have stopped buying poultry since the disease spread to Turkey," Maryam Salehzadeh, an Iranian mother of two, told Reuters. "I don't care about myself but I don't want my children to die."
(Additional reporting from Reuters' Moscow, Tehran, Athens, and other bureaus)
