From Reuters: The discovery of bird flu in Romania and Turkey supports the theory the virus is being spread by migrating wildfowl, scientists said on Tuesday Oct. 18. Since the discovery in July 2005 that H5N1 bird flu had spread to birds in Siberia, experts have feared that migratory wildfowl would bring the virus westward.
“These latest cases in Romania and Turkey have reinforced that theory,” Alex Thiermann, president of the International Animal Health Code at the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) in Paris, told Reuters.
H5N1 is particularly deadly for chickens, but wild waterfowl such as ducks and geese can carry the virus without showing symptoms or becoming ill.
“The existence of known migration flyways of several birds species connecting Southeast Asia, Siberia and Europe shows a possibility of the introduction of the H5N1 virus to both eastern and western Europe,” the OIE said this week in a report on the outbreak in Russia.
OIE said surveillance should be increased in the Caspian Sea region, which was recognized as “a significant wintering area for water birds of various origins (Europe and western Asia) and can be considered a so-called biological ‘hub.’ ”
The spread of bird flu in parts of Asia and earlier this year from Russia to Kazakhstan has been linked to legal and illegal cross-border trade in live poultry. The widespread practice of cock-fighting in Asia may have played a role there. But trade was not likely the source of the latest cases.
“The role of migratory birds carrying the Asian H5N1 influenza virus under certain conditions to other parts of the world seems now more likely,” the OIE anounced after the latest test results from Romania and Turkey.
The OIE and U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) have pinpointed the Caspian and Black Sea regions, as well as the Balkans, as a “gateway to central Europe for the virus.” Bird migration routes also ran across Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine and some Mediterranean countries to Africa, where
outbreaks were possible.
Didier Houssin, the government official in charge of France’s bird flu defense, told Le Monde newspaper that migrating birds were the most likely source of transmission, using flyways between the Black Sea region and Mediterranean.
“This axis raises fears that pockets will emerge in the Middle East and then in Africa. It then becomes a very serious threat. One can imagine the virus becoming endemic in Africa as it is in several Asian countries,” Houssin said.
“We’d be confronted with great difficulties in controlling the disease, and, in a few months, with the threat of potentially infected birds flying back up to western Europe from Africa,” Houssin said.
