Greece and Italy find killer bird flu in swans

ROME - Greece and Italy have said they have found swans with the H5N1 bird flu virus, the first known cases in the European Union of wild birds with the deadly strain of the disease.

As the slow creep of the virus around the globe continued, Romania said more infections were suspected in birds in the Danube delta and Bulgaria said the lethal strain had been confirmed among swans in wetlands close to the Romanian border. The region is a haven and transit point for migrating birds.

Nigeria started testing people who have fallen ill close to where the virus has been found among birds, in the first outbreak in Africa of a disease that has spread seemingly inexorably across the Eurasian landmass from China and Vietnam.

Finance ministers of the Group of Eight (G8), meeting in Moscow, discussed the risk of a worldwide pandemic and issued a new call for wealthy countries to help poor ones fight bird flu.

"We acknowledge the risk of a possible avian flu pandemic and its potential economic and financial impacts," they said.

Italy said five wild swans found in the southern island of Sicily and on the southern mainland had tested positive for the highly pathogenic version of the H5N1 strain.

"It is certain that the virus has arrived in Italy," Health Minister Francesco Storace said.

Transport of animals susceptible to the virus would be banned in the three regions, Storace added. No bird flu had been found in farm or domestic birds and there was no need to fear a risk to human health.

"I don't think we in Italy are in the habit of cooking swans and eating them," he said.

A regional health official in Sicily said the swans were believed to have migrated from Russia.

A spokesman for the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said it was confident Italy was ready to deal with the outbreak.

"In most of western Europe there are very effective veterinary services and the poultry industry is of an advanced sort, not the 'backyard' sort, so the likelihood of there being a danger to the human population is very much less than, say, in Africa," he said.

Tested positive

Three swans found around the Thermaikos Gulf and sent by Greece to the EU lab in Britain tested positive for the deadly strain. A sample from a wild goose on Skyros island in the Aegean has also been sent to Britain.

"This is the deadly, the aggressive strain of the virus," Deputy Agriculture Minister Alexandros Kontos told Reuters. "The swans were probably flying to Africa because of the cold snap in central Europe."

Preventive measures include isolating poultry and keeping flocks indoors, banning hunting, disinfecting farms and a ban on meat or eggs from the areas.

The new Bulgarian infections, too, were among wild swans. Angel Kunchev, head of the health ministry's epidemic control unit, said he expected samples from other swans found dead around the country since January 31 to also test positive.

Bulgarian police planned to shoot wild dogs and foxes which might spread around the remains of infected birds.

The only previous proven case of bird flu on EU territory was in Britain, in a parrot imported from South America.

Some 70,000 treatment courses of Tamiflu have arrived in Iraq and will be taken to the north which has seen outbreaks among humans, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.

The virus has killed four people in neighbouring Turkey and at least 84 in Asia since early 2003 and forced affected nations to cull millions of domestic fowl.

Indonesia reported on Saturday that a 27-year-old woman had died of the disease, the second in two days.

- REUTERS