Bird Flu - Avian Influenza - news - information

Monday, August 27, 2007

Contaminated straw believed at fault in German H5N1 outbreak

BERLIN: Straw contaminated with the H5N1 strain of bird flu was the likely source of an outbreak of the disease at a poultry farm in southern Germany that resulted in 160,000 birds being slaughtered, an official said Monday.

Ottmar Fick, the chief veterinarian in the Erlangen district of northern Bavaria, said it remained unclear how the straw, which was stored on the farm, became infected, although wild birds were a possible source.

Two experts from a federal animal disease lab were at the site, he said.

The virus was detected in ducklings at the farm Friday, and the federal lab confirmed the presence of the lethal H5N1 strain on Saturday.

Authorities ordered the slaughter of all 160,000 birds on the farm as a precaution — a process Fick said was completed Sunday night. A three-kilometer (1.85-mile) exclusion zone is in place

Bird flu story source: Herald Tribune

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Deadly bird flu found in German poultry farm

BERLIN (Reuters) - An outbreak of deadly bird flu has been identified in a southern German poultry farm, a spokeswoman for Bavaria’s environment ministry said on Saturday.

The spokeswoman said dead ducks from the farm in Wachenroth in Bavaria’s Erlangen-Hoechstadt area had tested positive for the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of the virus, which can be lethal for people living in close contact with birds.

All 160,000 birds in the farm would be culled, the ministry spokeswoman said. The farm has been sealed off.

Local authorities had earlier said the farm contained some 44,000 birds. Officials discovered the infection after more than 400 ducks at the farm died over a short period of time.

Germany identified several cases of the deadly H5N1 strain in wild birds in Bavaria in June. A string of bird flu infections were also registered in Germany last year.

Earlier this week, Russia banned poultry imports from Italy to prevent the spread of bird flu after outbreaks there.

Source of bird flu story: Reuters

Bird Flu in Chickens, Ducks Spread to Two More Vietnam Provinces

Authorities in Vietnam confirmed Saturday that bird flu has spread to two more provinces in the country.

That brings the total to four of Vietnam’s 64 provinces where the H5N1 virus has been found in recent outbreaks.

Agriculture officials say the virus killed 250 young chickens in the southern Dong Thap province about a week ago. They report another 150 ducks and 35 chickens were sick with the virus on Wednesday in the northern Thai Nguyen province.

The virus had earlier been reported in the northern provinces of Dien Bien and Cao Bang.

Bird flu story source: VOA

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Italy minister says Russian ban on poultry unjustified

ROME, August 21 (RIA Novosti) - Italian Agriculture Minister Paolo De Castro said Russia’s ban on poultry imports from Italy was ungrounded, a local business daily reported Tuesday.

The Russian agricultural regulator introduced Monday a temporary ban on Italian poultry imports to Russia. The ban covers Italian imports of live poultry, eggs and all poultry products, as well as used equipment for keeping, slaughtering and processing poultry.

“Our poultry control is one of the strictest in Europe, and poultry deliveries to the domestic and foreign markets come exclusively from healthy birds,” the Il Sole-24 ore newspaper quoted the minister as saying.

The daily said that although two outbreaks of the H5N2 virus, which is harmless to humans, had been detected in Italy, the country maintained bird flu under control.

Bird flu story source: Novosti

Russia bans Italian poultry to stop bird flu

MOSCOW, Aug 21 (Reuters) - Russia banned poultry imports from Italy from Monday to prevent the spread of the bird flu virus after an outbreak in the EU member state, the Agriculture Ministry’s animal and plant health watchdog said on Tuesday.

The ban applies to live birds, hatching eggs, poultry meat and all poultry products not subject to thermal treatment, poultry feed and used equipment for keeping and slaughtering birds, a spokesman for the Rosselkhoznadzor agency said.

Italy’s Health Ministry said the bird flu strain found in Italy was not dangerous to human beings.

Italian agency ANSA quoted the ministry as saying the two recent outbreaks of the H5N2 virus had been extinguished.

ANSA said the two outbreaks in northern Italy were isolated last week during regular bird flu checks on farms and affected birds had been culled.

Italian Agriculture Minister Paolo De Castro said the virus found in Italian poultry was not dangerous to human health, adding that food and agriculture product safety controls in Italy were among the tightest in Europe.

“Russia’s decision does not appear to be justified by any other reasons than commercial ones. There is no danger for consumers,” De Castro said in a statement late on Monday.

Russia normally bans imports of poultry after it receives official confirmation from the international animal health body OIE. This year it has banned poultry imports from other EU members Hungary, Britain and the Czech Republic due to bird flu.

Russia banned meat and plant products from EU member Poland in November 2005. Warsaw in return blocked the start of talks between Moscow and Brussels on a new strategic partnership pact, covering areas such as energy, human rights and trade.

Russia regulates meat imports by tariff quotas. In the past, traders used import bans imposed on some countries for safety reasons to increase volumes of imports from other countries within the overall quotas. (Additional reporting by Svetlana Kovalyova in Milan)

Bird flu story source: Reuters‘ Alertnet

Friday, August 17, 2007

H5N2 bird flu virus detected in Italian poultry

Italy - (Promed) - An outbreak of low pathogenic avian influenza, type H5N2, has been diagnosed on a poultry farm in Lugo, Italy. This has been notified by the Ministry of Agrculture.

Lugo is 25 km(15.5 miles) west of Ravenna, in Emilia Romano. The farm included 7000 adult ducks, 3000 geese and 150 chickens. The infection was detected within the framework of the annual, routine sero-surveillance activities. No clinical symptoms were seen.

The holding was confined, and the animals will be culled. A restriction zone of one-km(.6 mile) radius has been imposed around the site. Last week, an infected hobby-holding was found.

Bird flu story source: Promed

Monday, August 13, 2007

Bali has first human bird flu death

JAKARTA, Indonesia (Reuters)—An Indonesian woman has died of bird flu in Bali, the first human death from the virus on the resort island hugely popular with foreign tourists.

A health-ministry official said on Monday the 29-year-old woman came from west Bali. She died on Sunday in hospital after suffering from high fever.

Her five-year-old daughter also died recently after playing with chickens, but it was unclear if the girl died of bird flu.

Joko Suyono of the ministry’s bird flu center said a 2-year-old girl living close by had also developed bird flu symptoms, but was recovering in hospital. Test results had not come back yet.

News of the woman’s death will be a blow to Bali, which is the center of Indonesia’s tourism industry and has been trying to shake off the impact of several deadly bomb attacks by Islamic militants in recent years.

The woman from a village in the district of Jembrana was suffering from a high fever before dying of multiple organ failure, said Ken Wirasandi, a doctor at the Sanglah hospital in the Balinese capital Denpasar.

Suyono said by telephone a second laboratory test had confirmed the woman had the H5N1 bird flu virus.

Suyono said there had been sick chickens around the woman’s house, and many had died suddenly in recent weeks.

“The villagers didn’t burn the carcasses. Instead they buried them or fed them to pigs,” Suyono added.

Contact with sick fowl is the most common way for humans to contract the H5N1 virus.

The woman had started showing symptoms more than a week ago, but was only admitted to hospital six days later.

She was transferred to a bigger hospital in Denpasar on Friday, where she was treated in the isolation unit, Suyono said.
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He said initial investigations indicated last month the daughter had become sick after playing with chickens and died a week later.

“We were unable to retrieve any tissue samples, so we can’t confirm whether she died of bird flu,” Suyono added.

Bird flu story source: CNN online

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Bird Flu Kills Teenage Boy in Vietnam

Health officials in Vietnam say bird flu has killed a teenage boy, the country’s second death in a little more than a week.

Officials confirmed Tuesday that the 15-year-old boy died Friday in Hanoi, and tested positive for the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.

His death was the fourth for Vietnam this year. On July 31, a 22-year-old pregnant woman also died from the disease.

Vietnam once had the world’s highest rate of bird flu infections and death, but the government managed to contain outbreaks through mass vaccination campaigns, culling millions of birds, and public education campaigns.

Despite those efforts, the virus came back strongly this year and has hit poultry farms across the country.

The World Health Organization says 95 other people have contracted the bird flu virus since 2003 in Vietnam, 42 of whom have died.

The WHO says close contact with dead or sick birds is the principal source of human infection. 

Bird flu story source: VOA

Saturday, August 04, 2007

More bird flu cases found in Germany

BERLIN (AFP) - More wild birds have been found dead of the H5N1 bird flu virus in Germany, where domestic poultry were infected last month, authorities in Bavaria said Saturday.

Police in the southern state said restrictions on movement had been put in place around the Speichersee lake, east of Munich, after two out of three ducks found dead there were confirmed to have been carrying the virus.

Press reports said around 14 other birds had also been found dead in the area, but it was not known if they were infected with the virus, which is potentially deadly to humans.

More than 150 wild birds have died of H5N1 in southern and eastern Germany in the past few weeks, and a month ago the disease spread to a smallholding in the eastern state of Thueringen.

It was the first time this year that the highly pathogenic strain of avian flu had been found among domestic birds in Germany. Scientists have suggested it could have jumped the border from the neighbouring Czech Republic where it has infected poultry on large turkey and chicken farms.

Bird flu story source: AFP

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Burma Confirms New Bird Flu Outbreak

BANGKOK—Authorities in the central Burmese region of Bago have confirmed a new outbreak of avian influenza, officials told RFA’s Burmese service.

“This time, it started among backyard chicken and ducks,” government veterinary expert and former director general of the country’s livestock breeding and veterinary ministry Than Hla said. “Then it spread to farms in some way.”

He confirmed reports that 3,800 chickens had already been slaughtered on a poultry farm in Letpandan town, 145 kms (90 miles)northwest of Rangoon, and that laboratory tests had confirmed they were infected with the virulent H5N1 strain of bird flu.

“Letpandan is a small town it doesn’t have big farms and it happened only on that farm,” Than Hla said.
Outbreak said under control

An official in the Bangkok office of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said the outbreak was now under control.

Than Hla said veterinary experts were called in on July 28 after a outbreak in ducks. This later spread to the poultry farm.

“This time, the outbreak is different from the previous wave in Mandalay, where it happened in many farms at the same time...It happened only on a single farm in Letpandan, and it did not spread to other farms.”

“After culling the birds we quarantined the area and put under intensive surveillance. So far no new cases were found,” he said.

“Since it is rainy season here we are facing a lot of trouble in burying or destroying the animals. When we dig the ground to bury them, all the water comes out and the cost of fuel is too high to burn them, but we are doing our best,” he told reporter Khin Maung Soe.

The Letpandan outbreak came just days after the authorities reported outbreaks on two poultry farms in Mon state, about 300 kms (180 miles) south of the former capital, Rangoon.

About 300 chickens were slaughtered on those two farms, in the first known outbreaks of bird flu since June. Burmese authorities culled 660,000 birds last year to contain the spread of the deadly virus, which has ripped through Asian poultry flocks since 2003 and caused 319 cases in humans, 192 of which were fatal.

Bird flu story source: RFA (Radio Free Asia)