Balkans may be bird flu gateway to wider Europe

Birds heading south for the winter from Siberia may carry a deadly strain of avian flu to the Balkan peninsula and mingle with other flocks from northern Europe, experts said yesterday.

Millions of birds migrate each year to Black Sea neighbours Romania and Bulgaria for the milder winter climate, making the area a potential gateway to central Europe for the bird flu virus.

Samuel Jutzi, head of the United Nations agency in charge of monitoring and controlling the flu, said its quick spread indicated migratory birds may be able to carry it over long distances and that it could reach the Balkans in a few months.

"Knowing the flyways and the bird species that use them, there is a high likelihood that the virus will continue to spread as it has so far," Mr Jutzi, director of the Animal and Production and Health Division of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, said.

"Particularly in the southeastern part of the Balkans, given that these flyways go down there... It is quite probable in the future and is a major concern for us."

The European Commission has said there is a relatively low risk of migratory birds spreading the virus but has banned poultry products from Russia and Kazakhstan.

One strain of bird flu potentially dangerous to humans, H5N1, has decimated flocks of poultry in southeast Asia and has killed more than 50 people over the past two years.

H5N1 has been officially registered in six Russian regions in Siberia and the Urals, and has also been confirmed in neighbouring Kazakhstan.

Experts fear the strain, which has killed around half of the people who contract it, could mutate into a variation easily spread among humans and spark a pandemic that could kill tens of millions of people.

Lakes and rivers along the Black Sea coast ranging from Ukraine to northern Turkey attract millions of birds each winter from an area stretching from northern Russia to Scandinavia.

Europe's largest wetlands, Romania's Danube delta, and lakes in northern Bulgaria, are popular among flocks of red-breasted geese from Siberia as well as white-fronted geese from Scandinavia, Poland and Germany.