March 7, 2006

US donates bird flu detection equipment to Romania

The US government has donated equipment to help Romanian authorities make faster and more accurate bird flu tests, the US embassy said Monday (Mar 6).

One of the systems, known as a SmartCycler system, was presented by the US Ambassador Nicholas Taubman to the National Animal Health Institute in Bucharest.

The other system has been installed in a laboratory in Tulcea in the Danube Delta, an area which is most at risk from bird flu because of its large number of domestic birds which have contacts with migrating birds.

The deadly H5N1 bird flu strain was first detected in the Danube Delta in October. There have been more than 30 clusters of cases in small villages in Romania since then, forcing authorities to cull more than 150,000 domestic birds as a precaution.

Meanwhile, neighbouring Serbia said Monday that a dead swan found in the village of Bacevci has been tested positive for a H5 bird flu subtype.

Authorities in the northern Polish city of Torun also reported that another dead swan, discovered Saturday, has tested positive for an H5 bird flu virus.

However more tests were needed to determine if the birds had succumbed to the deadly H5N1 strain.