Bird Flu Spreading Across Russia

by Kester Kenn Klomegah

(IPS) MOSCOW -- Russia is struggling to cope with an outbreak of bird flu in central Siberia. Researchers say it is the same virus that spread in Southeast Asian countries earlier.

Thousands of birds have died in five regions after they were infected by the virus H5N1. The virus was carried by birds migrating from Asia to Novosibirsk and Omsk regions, and to Tyumen and Kurgan regions of the Volga-Urals area, the Russian emergency situations ministry has reported.

The Novosibirsk and Omsk regions and the Altai territory are reported to be in a pandemic phase. This means that there is a high probability that humans may contract the disease, president of the Russian veterinary surgeons association Alexander Tkachev-Kuzmin said.

"The outbreak of bird flu and the increasingly large number of deaths among the bird population clearly show that it's not limited to those regions alone. There is the likelihood that it exists in other regions of the country since birds migrate over long distances," Tkachev-Kuzmin told IPS. The H5N1 strain is potentially dangerous to humans, but as yet no bird flu cases have been diagnosed in humans in Russia. The virus has swept through poultry populations in large areas of Asia since 2003, killing at least 60 people, most of them in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia. The epidemic killed millions of birds.

The journal Science reports that evidence of the H5N1 infection in migrant birds at Qinghai Lake in western China "indicates that this virus has the potential to be a global threat." The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged China to step up testing of wild geese and gulls. Thousands of birds have died also in China, the WHO estimates.

The outbreak was first detected about two months back in bar-headed geese at China's remote saltwater lake, a key breeding location for migratory birds that spend the winter in Southeast Asia, Tibet and India. The virus has hit bar-headed geese hardest, but has also affected brown-headed gulls and the great black-headed gulls.

Infection then spread within Russia. "Some wild birds migrated from the northern part of Siberia to the Caspian and Black Sea regions," the emergency ministry in Moscow said in a statement. "The risk of epidemic outbreaks in the industrial poultry breeding sector therefore increases, and losses in zones of infection may be as high as 75 percent to 100 percent of the poultry population. Human infection, especially among workers at the poultry farms, cannot be ruled out."

The agriculture ministry said in a statement last week that all poultry farms in Russia had adopted a strict regime to protect birds from the virus.

The outbreak in the Novosibirsk region apparently started about two weeks ago when large numbers of chicken, geese, ducks and turkeys began to die. Authorities proceeded to slaughter some 65,000 birds at locations where the virus was found. Poultry from 68 households was incinerated in specially prepared pits. But it is not clear whether this would stop the virus from spreading.

The Itar-Tass news agency has reported that Novosibirsk governor Victor Tolokonsky has earmarked $315,000 for new measures in 18 towns and villages. That means "killing all poultry in the regions where the outbreak was recorded," Tolokonsky said.

Authorities in all regions affected by the outbreak have tightened control over poultry farms, and begun to disinfect their workers. "A quarantine has been imposed on the affected settlements, and necessary measures are being taken to contain the sources of infection," deputy head of the Russian veterinary services Yevgeny Nepoklonov told IPS. "The spread of the virus will definitely have a serious impact on poultry production and domestic consumption for this year."

Nepoklonov said there are fears that migrating birds could take the virus to other countries. He said it could spread to the European Union as infected wild birds fly to the Netherlands, France and other locations in Europe and even further.

"It's possible that they have already spread it," Nepoklonov said. "They fly not only over Siberia but also along the far eastern coast on to the United States. Some birds fly along the Kazakh border from Novosibirsk water reservoirs and then on to Volgograd."

Several regional administrations have imposed a ban on poultry sales across provincial borders.

The European Union has said it would ban import of chickens and other poultry from Russia and Kazakhstan, even though no such import actually takes place. Russia imports more than a million tons of poultry annually, mainly from the United States, the European Union and Brazil.