Saturday, October 08, 2005

Cases of Avian (Bird) Flu in Romania

It seems that we are in the beginning of a very serious problem for all Europe. In the web page of ERT (http://www.ert.gr/en/) is published an article of Mrs Athina Saloystroy; according to that:

Romania reported its first case of avian flu on Friday, but said it had not yet established whether the virus found in domestic birds in the Danube delta was harmful to humans. "We discovered today three cases of domestic birds which were tested positive for the avian flu in the village of Ceamurlia de Jos in the Danube delta. There were three ducks in the yard of a peasant family," Agriculture Minister Gheorghe Flutur told reporters. Flutur said tests would be carried out to determine whether the flu was the deadly H5N1 strain or a less dangerous one. "We will send the samples to Great Britain for a thorough analysis," he said.

The Romanian minister also said he had imposed quarantine for three kilometres around the site and all domestic birds would be culled to prevent the disease from spreading in the environmentally sensitive delta.

Flutur also added that hunting was banned across the delta and that health authorities had dispatched medical teams to start testing for possible human cases in the area, just a few km from the Black Sea.

The Danube delta is Europe’s largest wetlands and a major migratory area for wild birds coming from Russia, Scandinavia, Poland and Germany.

(Source: http://news.ert.gr/newsDetails.asp?id=173689)