Ukrainian health officials confirm bird flu outbreak

Ukrainian health officials today said they had confirmed another outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in three poultry farms on Ukraine’s southern Crimean peninsula.

Oleg Rusetsky, head of the regional agriculture department, said health authorities had been monitoring the outbreak since the last week of December, but only on Monday did they receive confirmation the virus was the H5N1 strain, which has killed people in Turkey and elsewhere in Asia.