Deadly bird flu spreads to more Ukraine villages

Health officials in the Ukraine are warning that bird flu, including the H5N1 strain dangerous to humans, has spread to more villages in the Crimea peninsula.

Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov says he is optimistic that emergency measures invoked to contain the outbreak in the peninsula jutting into the Black Sea may be repealed by the New Year.

However officials say that the situation in Crimea remains difficult as there are more cases of infection occurring in domestic birds.

Bird flu had now appeared in 25 villages in Crimea, and the H5N1 strain has been confirmed in 11 of those.

As many as 54,000 birds have been rounded up and destroyed in the affected villages and 513 residents remain under medical observation.

To date Ukraine has based all its data on bird flu on results obtained from laboratories in Russia, but now officials say they are waiting additional confirmation of the presence of H5N1 from a specialised laboratory in Britain.

Outbreaks of the H5N1 virus have also been detected in neighbouring Romania and Russia.

The initial discovery of bird flu late in November prompted President Viktor Yushchenko to invoke a state of emergency in several villages, with the seizure and slaughter of birds and imposition of exclusion zones patrolled by police.

But many villagers complained that birds had been falling ill since September with officials taking no action; Yushchenko then fired Ukraine's chief veterinary officer.

Crimea has around 22 million of the 190 million domestic birds in the ex-Soviet state.

Surprisingly poultry producers say the outbreak has had no effect on consumption.

Yekhanurov has told his government that the measures undertaken in Crimea, a major stopping point for migratory birds heading south for the winter, were containing the outbreak.

He has proposed lifting the state of emergency, imposed for the first time since Ukraine won independence in 1991, but is first requesting that a legal analysis of the state of emergency be carried out.

Yekhanurov apparently believes that a quarantine will be quite sufficient and does not envisage a problem in lifting the state of emergency.