ROME, Aug. 31 (UPI) -- The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warns the deadly bird flu is likely to be carried to the Middle East, Europe, South Asia and Africa.
With it, the virus will carry over the flyways of wild water fowl the potential to trigger a global human pandemic, the U.N. agency said Wednesday.
"Avian influenza is an international problem that definitely needs a strong international response," FAO Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech told reporters at the agency's headquarters in Rome. "FAO is concerned that poor countries in South-East Europe, where wild birds from Asia mingle with others from northern Europe, may lack the capacity to detect and deal with outbreaks of bird flu."
Birds flying from Siberia, where the virus H5N1 has been recently detected, may carry it to the Caspian and Black Sea in the foreseeable future, FAO said. These regions and countries in the Balkans could become a potential gateway to central Europe for the virus. Bird migration routes also run across Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine and some Mediterranean countries, where bird flu outbreaks are possible, it added.
India and Bangladesh, which currently seem to be uninfected, are also considered at risk. Bangladesh, and to a lesser extent India, harbor large numbers of domestic ducks and are situated along one of the major migratory routes. They have the potential to become new large endemic areas of infection, FAO warned, adding the virus could be carried to Africa.
FAO and the inter-governmental World Animal Health Organization have developed a strategy for the control of bird flu in Asia that will cost over $100 million to support surveillance, diagnosis and other control measures, including vaccination. So far, donors have pledged around $25 million in support of the strategy.
