December 30, 2005

Bird flu still threatens eastern Europe to Turkey

Bird flu continues to pose a threat to countries in the eastern European region stretching to Turkey.

On Thursday, Bulgaria announced that it would halt imports of Turkish poultry as a precautionary measure. Imports of heat-treated poultry products, however, will continue.

To date, Bulgaria remains free of bird flu. The country tightened checks on birds after neighbouring Romania became the first in Europe to confirm bird flu infections in its poultry.

Meanwhile tests conducted in a British laboratory have shown up positive for the lethal H5N1 bird flu strain in suspected Romanian poultry.

The poultry had originated from six villages east of the Romanian capital, Bucharest. Bird flu was also detected in another 26 villages in and around Romania's Danube delta, Europe's largest migratory wetland for birds and the source of this recent bird flu outbreak on the continent.

In Ukraine, President Viktor Yushchenko has lifted the state of emergency on bird flu after confirmations that the country's Crimea region was now clean of the deadly H5N1 bird flu .

Ukraine's first bird flu outbreak in November led the President to order an alert in several villages and the mass culling of domestic flock. More than 62,000 birds have since been slaughtered in Ukraine, according to official reports.