Dangerous bird flu strain found in Croatia

[b-man]

Dangerous bird flu strain found in Croatia; new outbreak in China



Scientists monitoring bird migration as conduit for flu
BRUSSELS, Belgium — The European Union announced today the dangerous H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found in Croatia, the latest European nation to be hit by the virus.

The Chinese government today, meanwhile, announced that a bird flu outbreak has killed 545 chickens and ducks in a village in central China — the country's third case of the disease in two weeks.

The outbreak in Hunan province prompted authorities to destroy 2,487 other birds in an effort to contain the virus, the Agriculture Ministry said in a report posted on the Web site of the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health.

Following the announcement of the suspected Croatian case over the weekend, the European Commission on Monday issued a precautionary ban on imports of live poultry, wild birds and feathers from that Balkan country. "That ban remains in force,'' said EU Commission spokesman Philip Tod.

Croatian authorities said they slaughtered all domestic poultry in four villages near a Nasice pond where two of 13 swans found dead tested positive for bird flu on Monday.

The H5N1 strain, which has devastated poultry flocks in Asia in the past two years, has now been found in Romania and the European part of Russia. It has also shown up in the Asian part of Turkey, close to Europe.

In Germany, officials said that preliminary tests on wild geese found dead there came back positive for bird flu, but said there would be further tests to see whether they carried the H5N1 strain.

Slovenia, Hungary and France were also testing birds found dead for signs of bird flu, underscoring the extreme sensitivity of the issue even though officials have urged Europeans not to panic.

The virus is hard for humans to contract, and most of the 62 people in Asia who have died from the disease since 2003 were poultry farmers directly infected by sick birds.

In Copenhagen, Denmark, European health officials said the continent was better prepared to contain outbreaks of bird flu than Asia because of better resources and communication between countries.

China's Agriculture Ministry said the third outbreak there was "under control,'' the official Xinhua News Agency reported. It said the virus was confirmed to be the deadly H5N1 strain on Tuesday by a government laboratory.

Agriculture Ministry and Hunan provincial health and agriculture officials refused to give any other information.

The report came as the government said it was activating an emergency disease-reporting network and forestry officials were on the lookout for cases in wild birds, which experts worry might spread the virus when they migrate before winter.

B-man