Romania: Bird flu has no borders

Romanian authorities were culling thousands of domestic birds in the Danube Delta region to prevent the spread of a deadly strain of bird flu that has decimated flocks and killed dozens of people in Asia.

Officials said yesterday that they were also awaiting test results from a British laboratory on samples from birds found dead in Maliuc, a village 20 miles from Ceamurlia de Jos, where the H5N1 bird flu strain was first detected in Romania.

Meanwhile, Turkish authorities said yesterday that the outbreak in the western village of Kiziksa had been contained, while initial lab tests conducted after about 1,000 chickens died in eastern Turkey showed no signs of bird flu.

Romanian officials said all domestic birds in Ceamurlia de Jos were killed and the village was being disinfected, but the area would remain under quarantine for 21 days before it could be declared free of the virus.

“We finished (killing domestic fowl) in Ceamurdia de Jos,” said Gabriel Predoi, who heads the national Agency for Animal Health. He said authorities hoped to complete the bird cull in Maliuc by yesterday.

Officials in protective suits were spraying disinfectant in residents’ yards and homes in both villages, including around refrigerators, kitchens and other areas which may have come into contact with infected birds.

Both Ceamurlia de Jos and Maliuc are in the quarantined eastern province of Dobrogea. All cars, trucks and trains travelling between Dobrogea and the rest of the country are being disinfected, while authorities have increased the surveillance of domestic birds in neighbouring areas, Agriculture Minister Gheorghe Flutur said.

The two villages are under even stricter regulations, with police restricting access to them. Authorities have also banned farmers in surrounding areas from leaving birds and animals outside, for fear they could come in contact with wild migratory birds carrying the virus.

Flutur said anyone not keeping domestic birds confined could face fines. He said he flew over the region by helicopter and saw that some residents in neighbouring counties were not complying with the order. About three-fourths of Romania’s estimated 100 million birds live on small farms, which makes it more difficult to fight bird flu, he said.

Flutur said tests in areas surrounding Ceamurlia de Jos and Maliuc showed the virus had not spread to other regions and that the tight quarantine measures were working. Tests on 15 swans that died on Friday on the nearby Obretinul Mic lake proved negative for the virus, he said.

Flutur met yesterday with his Moldovan counterpart Anatol Gorodenco and pledged cooperation to stamp out the virus from the region. Moldova and Uraine neighbour the Danube Delta, a large nature reserve where millions of migratory birds have been arriving from Russia on their way to Africa and are believed to have carried the virus.

“This virus has no borders,” Flutur said, adding that countries must work together to stop its spread.