Deadly bird flu strain spreads in Kazakhstan

By Raushan Nurshayeva

ASTANA (Reuters) – A deadly strain of avian influenza that
can infect humans has spread to three more Kazakh villages, a
senior official at the Central Asian state’s Agriculture
Ministry told Reuters on Thursday.

The disclosure comes a day after Kazakh officials said the
strain, H5N1, was detected in a village in the northern
Pavlodar region that borders Russia, which has also reported a
bird flu outbreak that continues to spread.

The H5N1 strain has killed more than 50 people in Asia
since August 2003. Although no humans have yet been affected in
Kazakhstan or Russia, there are fears the disease might now
spread to humans on the Eurasian landmass.

Talgat Abulgazin, the head of the ministry’s veterinary
disease monitoring department, said he believed the virus’s
spread among poultry in Kazakhstan could be checked.

“The epizootic situation for this disease is under
control,” he said in an interview, using the term for an
outbreak of disease affecting many animals of the same kind at
one time.

“(But) I cannot guarantee that we will be able to eradicate
this in Kazakhstan, although all efforts are being made to do
so.”

Tests had shown that H5N1 was now present in three other
villages outside the Pavlodar region: two in the Akmolinsk
region to the west, and one in Karaganda region, in central
Kazakhstan, Abulgazin said.

“If all our agencies work together under one single
command, we may be able to do something. I think we may be able
to stop the spread of this disease,” Abulgazin said.

There are concerns that migrating birds could spread the
disease further to Europe and eventually the United States.

Reflecting fears that bird flu’s jump to humans could
unleash a global pandemic, a dozen Asian nations on Thursday
agreed to build a regional stockpile of anti-bird flu drugs.

MIGRATION THREAT

Abulgazin said there was an immediate threat to Kazakhstan
from infected birds in Russia, to the north.

“We are of course worried about the moment when the
migration of birds from the north starts,” Abulgazin said. “The
birds will have to makes stops on our territory and that’s
something to be concerned about.”

The migration is expected to start in September.

Kazakhstan’s sheer size and small population — 15 million
people in a country the size of Western Europe — has led
Kazakh officials, who are culling birds in affected areas, to
strike a calm note about the outbreak.

The affected areas are under quarantine and birds inside
them are being culled.

But the disease also continued to advance through Russian
Siberia on Thursday, with mass deaths of wildfowl and poultry
registered in three more villages there — in the Kurgan and
Altai regions near the Kazakh border, media reported.

But there was no official word on whether the virus found
in those regions was the deadly strain that can kill humans.

Mikhail Kozlov, Altai’s acting governor, was quoted as
saying by Itar-Tass news agency that the situation in the
steppe region remained “alarming.”

“It is necessary to take most decisive measures to prevent
the disease from spreading in the region and maintain people’s
safety,” he told Tass in the Altai capital of Barnaul.

The Russian Emergencies Ministry said in a statement the
number of bird deaths rose to 10,170 on Thursday — up from
just over 8,300 on Wednesday. The ministry said most deaths
occurred in the Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Kurgan and Altai regions
of Siberia.
(Additional reporting by Maria Golovnina in Moscow)