Reuters
Sat Oct 8, 2005 7:42 PM BST
By Radu Marinas
BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania reported new cases of avian flu in the Danube delta on the Black Sea on Saturday and began culling hundreds of birds to prevent the disease from spreading, authorities said.
Ion Agafitei, the chief veterinarian, told reporters three birds had tested positive for the virus in the village of Smardan after the first cases emerged in another village on Friday.
Further tests, including in Britain, were planned, to discover whether it was the H5N1 strain which has killed 65 people and millions of birds in Asia since 2003 and been found in Russia and Kazakhstan.
Experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a disease which spreads easily among humans, sparking a pandemic that could kill millions.
If the Romanian cases turn out to be H5N1, they would be the first sign the strain had spread to Europe.
"We have killed 220 (domestic) birds so far in Ceamurlia de Jos, where the first cases occurred," Agafitei said. "The process is ongoing and will continue."
Quarantines had been imposed on the two villages and five others where suspicious bird deaths had occurred in recent days and no livestock may be taken from the delta to market.
In Ceamurlia de Jos, a few km (miles) from the Black Sea, men with white masks were poisoning dozens of birds with carbon dioxide before burning them.
"Nobody dares to eat poultry here after what happened," Mihai Carciumaru, the mayor of the village, told Reuters.
"I attended a wedding today and I asked doctors to check whether the guests had poultry on their menu. But it's not the case, they've all decided to eat pork."
Television stations showed peasants from the village saying large numbers of poultry had died in recent days.
"Mysteriously my birds die one after another. I've lost 45 geese and authorities will kill the rest leaving me with nothing," an angry villager told private station Antena 3.
The H5N1 avian flu virus has been officially registered in six Russian regions in Siberia and the Urals, and has also been confirmed in Kazakhstan.
The Danube delta contains Europe's largest wetlands and is a major migratory area for wild birds coming from Russia, Scandinavia, Poland and Germany. The birds mainly move to warmer areas in North Africa including the Nile delta for winter.
Romanian authorities banned hunting across the delta which is home to 14,000 people and sent medical teams to test for possible human cases.
A senior Russian health official said on Friday the outbreak of avian flu in Russia was dying out but could make a comeback next spring.
Bulgaria, which is seen as a potential next destination for the bird flu outbreak, said it had not registered yet any cases. Veterinary officials said they would travel to the Danube river region to monitor the implementation of safety rules.
On Friday, U.S. President George W. Bush asked vaccine makers to do their utmost to boost flu vaccine production amid fears the country was unprepared to deal with a pandemic while officials from 80 countries and the United Nations wrapped up a meeting on ways to fight one.
