Ukraine Hit By New Bird Flu Outbreak
January 19, 2008 by mimmson
Filed under Flu Pandemic - Top News Stories
The Ukrainian government has confirmed a new outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in poultry in the Crimean peninsula.
The virus was found in dead chickens from a battery farm in the village of Rivne, a spokesman for the emergency situations ministry, Volodymyr Ivanov, told AFP.
More than 150 birds at the farm had died from bird flu earlier in the week, the ministry said, with Ivanov adding that the village had been cordoned off.
Crimea’s first outbreak of the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which is deadly if contracted by humans, occurred in December 2005.
On that occasion the virus was eliminated after the authorities swept through farmsteads on the peninsula destroying tens of thousands of domestic birds kept for food by local residents.
H5N1 has claimed more than 200 human lives around the world, mostly in Asia. In Ukraine there have been no human casualties,
Scientists worry that the virus could mutate into a form directly transmissible between humans and cause a devastating pandemic.
