EU - Romania builds up defences for new bird flu wave
Published:September 15, 2006
Source :Reuters
A new wave of bird flu outbreaks may occur in Romania next month, when wild birds start migrating from Siberia, but the Black Sea state will be better prepared to deal with it, Romania's chief veterinarian said.
Romania was the first country to detect the deadly H5N1 virus in birds in Europe in September last year, but earlier this year it had contained the last wave of the disease.
After Romania, which is crossed by major migratory paths for wild birds, the virus spread across Europe, the Middle East and Africa from Asia.
The EU candidate country, which is struggling to demonstrate its ability to deal with food safety problems ahead of its accession to the European Union as early as next year, has not reported any cases of bird flu in people.
"Nobody would want to see bird flu resurfacing, though a new wave might reach our country in October. We are carefully monitoring developments east of Romania," veterinarian Marian Avram told Reuters in a phone interview.
"Now, we are better equipped to fight the disease than we were last year," he said.
Brussels praised Romania for swiftly eraditing bird flu, which involved hundreds of outbreaks in fowl across its territory from the Danube delta to Bucharest and further to the central Transylvanian region.
In July, Romania contained the last active outbreak at a poultry farm in the county of Brasov, after sacking Avram's predecessor for negligence in failing to observe bio-security norms.
Avram said his agency launched a nationwide campaign last week to check the health of poultry flocks in courtyard farms. He also said the World Bank would give Romania a 30 million-euro loan for bird flu and human pandemic preparedness project.
"It's a sum that makes us financially comfortable," said Avram explaining that the money would be mainly used to acquire bird flu testing kits.
However, Avram said his agency's efforts to enforce defences against possible new outbreaks later this year have been hampered by lack of cooperation with some eastern neighbours.
"There are international organisations which timely inform us ... the cooperation with Ukraine has yet to reach the desired level," Avram said explaining the importance of dynamic monitoring of migratory birds -- the carriers of the disease -- in fighting the spread of the disease.
Most of the affected countries lie on the Pontic migratory route, which wild birds use to travel south from Scandinavia and Siberia to northern Africa for the winter. Scientists say birds have carried the virus to the Black Sea region from East Asia.
