Posted on 03/26/2006 7:24:18 PM PST by M. Espinola
Palestinian officials confirmed an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu at a second farm in the Gaza Strip on Friday, and Israel's foreign minister appealed to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for international assistance to the Palestinians to contain the disease.
In all, bird flu has been detected at two farms in the Gaza Strip, one near Gaza City and one near the southern town of Rafah on the border with Egypt, said Deputy Agriculture Minister Azzam Tubaili.
Gaza chicken farmers planned a protest later Friday, after government officials told them they would not be compensated for culled birds. The two affected farms have a total of 80,000 chickens.
"They (the farmers) are preventing the culling because they want compensation before they let us do this," Tubaili said. "This is causing confusion. Any second of delay will really make a difference."
Tubaili said samples had been sent to Israeli labs to check for bird flu. He said Israel has sent the Palestinians poison for killing the chickens.
On Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz to express Israel's concern over the ability of the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority to stop the spread of the flu. On Friday, Livni also appealed to Annan for help, according to a Foreign Ministry statement.
Israel fears that without international involvement, the Palestinian Authority would not take the immediate steps needed to limit the flu's spread.
Bird flu was discovered in Israeli villages not far from the Gaza Strip last week. Almost 1 million birds have been culled in Israel. An outbreak of avian flu was disclosed in Gaza on Wednesday.
On Thursday, Israel's Defense Ministry granted permission for the Palestinians to bring poison into Gaza to cull infected chickens, security officials said.
The H5N1 virus has killed or forced the slaughter of tens of millions of chickens and ducks across Asia since 2003, and recently spread to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
World health officials fear H5N1 could evolve into a virus that would easily be transmitted between people, potentially triggering a global pandemic, though there is no evidence that is happening.
About 100 people have died from the disease worldwide, after being directly infected by sick birds.
In Jordan, all poultry has been destroyed within a three-kilometer (1.9 mile) radius of a village where bird flu killed up to four domesticated turkeys north of the capital, an Agriculture Ministry official said Saturday.
Dr. Faisal Awawdeh, assistant secretary-general for livestock at the ministry, said the country was taking stringent measures to combat avian flu in poultry after the first cases of the deadly H5N1 strain were found in birds Thursday.
Tests showed that up to four turkeys that died in the northern village of Kafranjeh, on the outskirts of Ajloun, were infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.
"We have destroyed all poultry within the first circle - a 3-kilometer radius - of where the virus was discovered. A second circle of 7-kilometers (4.3 miles) beyond the infection point is under severe control and surveillance," Awawdeh told The Associated Press in a phone interview.
Awawdeh said that no new cases had been discovered beyond the first ones. A lab in Italy authorized by the World Health Organization was doing additional testing to confirm the Ajloun cases, he said, but did not give the its name or location.
Meanwhile, the Amman municipality had closed its popular 'Bird Garden' as precaution, while officials were vaccinating egg-laying chickens and monitoring poultry farms closely.
Jordan has not announced any human cases of the avian flu.
But as afflicted birds continue to appear across the region, countries that are free of the virus fear they will be next.
Saudi Arabia's Health Minister Hamed al-Manai voiced such concerns to journalists Saturday, but said the kingdom was taking stringent precautions to avoid an outbreak.
Saudi Arabia on Friday lengthened the list of countries from which it has banned imports of poultry products.
Jordan last week gave people living near the borders with Israel and the Palestinian territories, where bird cases have been discovered, a week to eat any fowl they were raising for household consumption, after which the birds would be culled.
Turkey, Iraq and Egypt are the only countries in the region where people have died of the deadly virus. The discovery of afflicted birds in several Middle Eastern countries, including the three, has led to extensive culling.
Jordanian farmers have reported losses equivalent to $1.4 million daily owing to a decline in the sale of poultry and eggs, according to Ali Assad, secretary-general for technical affairs in the Ministry of Health.
He said he expects losses to increase.
Jordan had earlier banned imports of poultry products and pet birds and allocated $8.5 million to handle an outbreak. Most of that would go to vaccinating poultry and compensating owners of destroyed flocks.
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I would not be surprised if the virus gets out of control in Gaza.
Once again, we see the fine minds of the Palestinians at play....
Save the chickens, sacrifice their children...
Semper Fi
That's typical of the Pal-Arabs. Reversed jihadic "logic".
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