Free Republic

NEW DELHI — India's government on Thursday confirmed an outbreak of H5N1-strain bird flu at a poultry farm in the northeastern state of Manipur, marking the country's first reported outbreak since February last year. Health officials said the highly virulent H5NI strain, which can infect humans, was detected in samples taken from birds that had died suddenly at the farm in Chingmeirong village on the outskirts of Imphal, capital of the insurgency-hit state that borders Myanmar.

Potentially lethal H5N1 bird flu resurfaces in Europe 27 Jun, 2007 l 1751 hrs PRAGUE: A bird flu scare in Central Europe was spreading on Wednesday as Czech authorities said the H5N1 virus potentially lethal to humans had been found in a flock of chickens after discoveries among wild birds in Germany. The presence of H5N1 bird flu was confirmed on a poultry farm near the village of Norin, just four kilometers (2.5 miles) from a farm where some 6,000 turkeys were slaughtered last week after the deadly virus was detected there. The farm in Tisova was the first incidence...

CAIRO - A third Egyptian child has tested positive for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, bringing the number of human cases in Egypt to 32, state news agency MENA said on Saturday. An official with the health ministry said the 4-year-old girl came from Qalyoubia province, north of Cairo, MENA said. Earlier, the health ministry said a 4-year-old boy from Qena province, around 670 kilometers (416 miles) south of Cairo, and a 7-year-old boy from Sohag province, around 470 kilometers south of Cairo, had been infected with bird flu. The 4-year-old girl was admitted to hospital on Friday, MENA...

Bird flu found on British farm By Bonnie Malkin and agencies Last Updated: 5:35pm GMT 03/02/2007 Government vets are investigating an outbreak of bird flu at a poultry farm after thousands of turkeys died. Police have cordoned off the farm Experts were called to a Bernard Matthews site at Holton near Halesworth, Suffolk, late on Thursday following the outbreak of an "unexplained" illness. Around 2,600 turkeys are thought to have died from the virus. The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said preliminary tests had confirmed a bird flu outbreak. Later, the EU Commission confirmed the potentially deadly...

KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait has confirmed 20 cases of the deadly bird flu in falcons, chickens and turkeys, a spokesman for the Health Ministry said Sunday. Ahmed al-Shatti said there were no human cases and an emergency plan has been launched. He said the cases were found at the Kuwait Zoo, farms and a clinic for falcons. The zoo and bird markets will be closed temporarily, and exports and imports of birds are being halted, he said. Kuwait has established a control room that operates around the clock to monitor and coordinate efforts to combat the disease, said al-Shatti, who is...

February 18, 2007 -- Russian officials took steps to prevent the spread of bird flu as they investigated new reports of birds dying near Moscow. AP cited Aleksei Alekseyenko, spokesman for the federal agricultural oversight agency Rosselkhoznadzor, as saying that four separate incidents of birds dying could be traced to single market located outside the city. Health workers leaving a quarantine zone in the village of Babenki, 50 kilometers from Moscow (epa) The market in question has been closed as investigators try to determine where it obtained the birds it was selling. Deadly Strain The news came a day after...

HOLTON, England -- Britain scrambled to contain its first outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu in domestic poultry yesterday after the virus was found at a farm run by Europe's biggest turkey producer. About 2,500 turkeys have died since Thursday at the Bernard Matthews farm near Lowestoft in eastern England. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said all 159,000 turkeys on the farm would be culled. "We're in new territory," National Farmers' Union Poultry Board Chairman Charles Bourns said. "We've every confidence in DEFRA, but until we know how this disease arrived,...

Weybridge, UK, 29 Jan. (AKI) - The European Union has confirmed that the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found on a farm in Hungary - the first infection in Europe since the disease was reported last August. Tests at the EU's approved laboratory in Weybridge, south of London, backed up the results announced by Hungary's authorities last week. A flock of 3,000 geese where the outbreak of the highly virulent H5N1 was reported last Thursday on a farm near Szentes in the southeastern Hungarian county of Csongrad has been destroyed. Authorities found the H5N1 bird flu strain...

OKAYAMA (Kyodo) The agriculture ministry announced Saturday that bird flu is suspected in the deaths of 22 chickens at a poultry farm in Takahashi, Okayama Prefecture. Workers bury bags of slaughtered chickens from the Sato Broiler farm at a mountain near the farm in Hyuga, Miyazaki Prefecture, on Saturday. KYODO PHOTO The word came just hours after the ministry confirmed that the deadly H5N1 strain was detected in the second outbreak of bird flu this month in Miyazaki Prefecture. The farm in Takahashi raises around 12,000 chickens. Two died Friday and 20 died Saturday, according to the ministry. It is...

HONG KONG -- Although fears of an avian-flu pandemic among humans have subsided, experts warn that the risk hasn't vanished. Less than a year ago, flocks of poultry, swans and wild birds were contracting the disease in Europe and Africa. The spread into the U.S. bird population seemed just a matter of time, and some people rushed to stockpile antiviral drugs. It has been relatively quiet since then, and some of the fears now seem overblown. Still, evidence continues to trickle in that the virus hasn't gone away. Birds continue to die from the disease in countries such as Vietnam...

Mekong Delta's bird flu cases force urgent action HCM CITY — The latest outbreak of bird flu in Soc Trang province has authorities on the alert in the Mekong River Delta, forcing the region to take drastic measures to prevent the epidemic from spreading to other provinces. The provincial authorities reported a bird flu epidemic on Sunday after samples were taken from the dead ducks in My Huong Commune, My Tu District had tested positive for the lethal virus. Since the recurrence of bird flu virus in early December in the Mekong Delta, the virus has now hit seven provinces,...

MIYAZAKI -- The farm ministry ordered nationwide checks of poultry farms Friday after about 750 chickens died earlier this week at a farm in the town of Kiyotake, Miyazaki Prefecture. The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry and the Miyazaki Prefectural Government said late Thursday night that a highly pathogenic bird flu is suspected as the cause of the deaths. This is the first domestic bird-flu outbreak since June 2005, when the H5N2 strain spread to 40 farms in Ibaraki Prefecture, forcing 5.7 million chickens to be culled, the agriculture ministry said. The ministry said the presence of the bird-flu virus...

Publication permit No. 14/GP-BC, granted by Press Department, Vietnam Ministry of Culture and Information. Hot News:  Last Updated: Tuesday, January 2, 2007 12:13:39 Vietnam (GMT+07) Bird flu raging in Vietnam's Mekong delta More poultry deaths and infected sites have been reported in Vietnam's Hau Giang, Ca Mau and Bac Lieu provinces in the last two days. Nguyen Hien Trung, head of Hau Giang's animal health department, said a new site had been identified in Vi Thuy district yesterday after a dead bird had tested positive for the deadly H5N1 virus strain. A total of three communes in two districts had...

Avian flu strikes back in Vietnam Saturday 30th of December 2006 02:3 On December 23, the family comprising of 36-year old woman and her three children of age range from three to thirteen, ate one ill chicken of the four and fell ill. They were admitted with the symptoms of bird flu in Nam Can Hospital of Ca Mau province this past week. According to the doctor Ho Van Van at the hospital, they had fever, coughing, decreased white blood cells and damaged lungs. He also added that the hospital is testing the swab samples from the patients for the...

Urgent measures against new bird flu outbreak the virus H5N1 has attacked many fowl: killing 600 chickens and 2,100 ducks in Khanh Binh and Khanh Hai communes, Tran Van Thoi district, Ca Mau province from December 11 â€" 20, 2006. The epidemic has spread to Vinh Binh commune, Hoa Binh district, Bac Lieu province. According to Ms. Chau Thi Kim Tuyen, Vice Head of the Ca Mau province Department of Veterinary Inspection, many local residents killed diseased poultry and threw the corpses into Hiep Hoa canal, which made the epidemic spread more rapidly among poultry breeding farms in Khanh Binh...

Bird flu spreads in Vietnam 22/12/2006 12:31  - (SA)   Bird flu hits Vietnam poultry Poultry culled to curb bird flu Hanoi - Authorities in Vietnam said on Friday that bird flu had spread in two provinces in the southern Mekong delta, where massive outbreaks were first reported early this week. Additional cases of the deadly H5N1 virus were detected in Ca Mau and Bac Lieu provinces, with nearly 8 300 poultry dead or culled, the national animal health department said on its website. The two provinces were the first to report major outbreaks of bird flu in the communist nation within the past...

The Chicken Littles Were Wrong The bird flu threat flew the coop. by Michael Fumento 12/25/2006, Volume 012, Issue 15 It's that time of year again--avian flu panic season. As the weather turns colder in the northern hemisphere and the flu starts making its annual rounds, the media and their anointed health experts are chirping and squawking once again about how we could be blindsided by a pandemic that some have estimated could kill a billion persons worldwide. New books like The Coming Avian Flu Pandemic join last year's The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian...

Dec. 10, 2006, 11:50AMExperts ponder bird flu's disappearance By MARIA CHENG AP Medical Writer © 2006 The Associated PressWomen clean chickens to prepare them for a local hotel, in an outdoor market in Bamako, Mali Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006. Bird flu experts from across the globe are gathering Wednesday in this West African nation to mobilize support, with an estimated US$1.5 billion (euro 1.1 billion) funding needed over the next several years to fight a deadly strain of bird flu experts fear could start a human pandemic, the World Bank says. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) REBECCA BLACKWELL: AP LONDON — Earlier...

Bird flu virus 'still smoldering,' U.S. expert says POSTED: 4:05 p.m. EST, December 6, 2006 By Caleb Hellerman CNNFirdaus Baskara, 8, of suburban Jakarta, Indonesia, survived bird flu. He's believed to have contracted the illness from his aunt. A year ago, headlines were screaming about a looming disaster: the rapid spread of bird flu across two-thirds of the globe. The H5N1 strain of the virus was killing more than half its human victims. Experts were urging the government to stockpile medicine and experimental vaccines. Dr. Robert Webster, whose vaccine the U.S. government plans to use in case of an outbreak,...

Va. hunters' game tested for avian flu November 27, 2006 RICHMOND, Va. -- Waterfowl hunters in Virginia are being enlisted in the fight against avian flu. Along eastern Virginia's waterways, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is scouting out hunters at wildlife management areas, popular hunting spots and boat ramps. There, some of them are being asked to allow a swab of their bagged game to test for the highly pathogenic version of H5N1 avian flu, according to Bob Ellis, assistant director of the department's wildlife division. Species being sampled include tundra swan, mute swan, snow goose, Atlantic brant and...