Romania Culls Fowl to Halt Bird Flu Spread
Date: 28-Nov-05
Country: ROMANIA
Author: Bogdan Cristel
On Saturday, authorities said a turkey from the small village of Scarlatesti, in the Braila county, some 70 miles (113 km) from the delta tested positive for the H5 type of avian flu.
The outbreak occurred in the local mayor's farm.
Agriculture Minister Gheorghe Flutur imposed quarantine on the village and said up to 17,000 fowl were being culled to halt the spread of the strain, probably brought by migratory birds.
Samples from the turkey have been sent to Britain to determine whether it is the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain which has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003 and which has been previously found in the Danube delta.
If it is the deadly strain, it would be the first evidence the disease has spread to the fringes of more populated regions of the Balkan state. It was unclear when the results would be known.
Scarlatesti, a village of 1,000 farmers in an area of lakes, lies close to a number of towns. It is 170 km from the capital Bucharest.
"We do the best to contain the virus. But only a soothsayer could say whether migratory birds will spread it westward," the country's chief veterinarian Ion Agafitei told Reuters.
The village has been cordoned off by riot police and residents are being vaccinated by medical teams against regular flu as a precautionary move to boost their immunity.
Scarlatesti villager Florica Ceaus, a 53-year-old woman who has spent the last 40 years in a wheelchair, said she was more concerned about the loss of her hens than the disease itself.
"I'm finished, this is a curse. I didn't expect the virus to reach my village. I'm not afraid of it (the disease) but they (the authorities) will kill my 20 hens, which are my entire fortune," Ceaus, who lives on a pension of 20 euros ($23) a month, told Reuters.
The Balkan state last month became the first country in mainland Europe to detect the deadly H5N1 virus in poultry in two villages in the Danube delta, Europe's largest wetlands near the Black Sea and a resting place for migratory wild birds.
The H5N1 strain led to the slaughter of tens of thousands of domestic birds in the country of 22 million, which has not reported any cases of bird flu in humans so far.
Scientists fear the virus might mutate into a form that could be easily transmitted between humans.