Deadly bird flu virus found in Azerbaijan
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-02-11 09:29

BAKU (AFP) - The strain of bird flu that is potentially fatal to humans has been found on the shores of the Caspian Sea in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, the country's health ministry announced.

"The results from tests on wild birds showed the presence of the H5N1 bird flu virus," the ministry said in a statement, referring to the strain that has killed almost 90 people globally since 2003.

"No cases of human infection have been detected."

Ilkana Guliyeva feeds her domestic birds in the village of Sahil, 35 km (22 miles) south of Baku on the Caspian coast, Azerbaijan, Friday, Feb. 10, 2006. Azerbaijan became the latest country on Friday to record the lethal H5N1 strain of avian flu, in migratory birds found dead on its Caspian Sea coast. The Health Ministry said Friday that a British laboratory had confirmed the presence of the H5N1 strain of avian flu in wild ducks and swans found on the Absheron Peninsula, which includes the capital Baku and surrounding villages. [AP]

Samples from dead birds were tested at a British laboratory before results were announced in Azerbaijan, the statement said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has dispatched delegations to all three South Caucasus republics -- Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia -- over the past two weeks, after an outbreak killed four people in neighboring Turkey.

A group of the experts sent to assess the region's ability to deal with an outbreak was to issue its recommendations on containing the disease in a meeting with Azerbaijan's health ministry on Friday, the deputy head of WHO's office in Baku, Elkhan Gasymov, said.

The Absheron region in which the capital Baku is located and where the infected birds were found "will be put under strict quarantine, special barriers will be set up and passing cars will be disinfected," a spokesman for Azerbaijan's veterinary service, Yolchu Khanveli, was quoted by local media as saying.

Meanwhile the health ministry has selected sites around the republic where infected birds are to be cremated, according to reports.

The World Bank is reviewing Azerbaijan's request for a five million dollar (4.2 million euro) loan to deal with bird flu incidents, Finance Minister Avez Alekperov said in televised remarks.

There have so far been no reports of the flu virus in farmed birds but Azerbaijani agriculture officials held meetings Thursday on preventive measures with local poultry farmers.

Azerbaijan is at high risk for the disease because it serves as a transit point and a wintering spot for thousand of migratory birds.

The health ministry called on people to isolate their domestic poultry from contact with wild birds, which are believed to be spreading the disease.

Thousands of wild birds have been found dead on the shores of lakes and rivers in Nakhchevan, an Azerbaijani exclave bordering on Iran, in the past year but officials blamed the deaths on poisoning from stagnant water.

The World Health Organization says that of the 165 confirmed cases of bird flu in humans detected since 2003, over half have died. Most of the victims have been in Asia.

Experts fear the virus could mutate into a strain that could be transmitted easily among humans, circumstances that could cause a global pandemic that would kill millions of people.

The virus spread to a third continent earlier this week when cases in birds were discovered in Nigeria.