ANKARA, 18 October 2005 — European Union experts visited yesterday a small village in northwestern Turkey where a lethal strain of bird flu was identified earlier this month, a spokesman for the Turkish Agriculture Ministry said. “Two experts tasked by the EU’s Agriculture Commission arrived in Turkey on Sunday and today they are visiting Kiziksa” village, Faruk Demirel told AFP.
The EU team will hold talks with local officials on the situation in the area and visit the nearby nature reserve of Manyas, a favorite with migratory birds which are believed to have introduced the deadly H5N1 virus to Turkey, Demirel said. The Turkish government says the virus, which scientists fear may spark a global epidemic, has been contained in Kiziksa where veterinary officials have slaughtered more than 9,000 birds.
A senior local official said life was returning to normal in the village but underlined that a strict quarantine imposed on the village on October 8 would stay in place until the end of the month.
“The (quarantine) precautions will be ended on Oct. 29. From now on life has returned to normal,” local governor Halil Y. Kaya said, according to newspaper reports.
The outbreak in Kiziksa has frayed nerves in Turkey with officials getting swamped with calls of suspicious bird deaths, but authorities firmly deny the existence of a second case of avian flu. Most recently, about 1,000 hens out of a flock of 6,000 perished Friday and Saturday in the province of Agri, near the border with Iran, prompting fears among local authorities that the birds, which were brought from the northwest, might have been infected with bird flu.
Elsewhere, Egypt has set up 27 observation posts along its borders to collect statistics about migratory birds potentially infected with the deadly bird flu virus, an Agriculture Ministry official said in Cairo yesterday. “The posts were already in place to observe wildlife but now we will sample out migrating birds and collect statistics,” Abdelkhaliq Abbas told AFP.
The migration of wild birds takes place in the fall when they fly from eastern and southern Europe over Egypt to seek warmer temperatures further south.
Abbas ruled out the possibility of infected wild birds contaminating domestic birds. “The country’s privately or publicly-owned chicken, turkey and most importantly quail farms are all indoors,” he said, adding that the measure was taken long before the avian flu outbreak. Egypt banned last Tuesday all live poultry imports and called off this year’s wild bird hunting season in an effort to keep out the flu.
