does it come here (Finland) before winter?

I wonder what we are going to do with all the birds in the city.

Update: See bird flu tracking resources on Agonist Disease Outbreaks Board

Aug 18, 2005  

 Deadly avian flu on the wing

By Mike Davis

The first bar-headed geese have already arrived at their wintering grounds near the Cauvery River in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Over the next 10 weeks, 100,000 more geese, gulls and cormorants will leave their summer home at Lake Qinghai in  western China, headed for India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and, eventually, Australia.

An unknown number of these beautiful migrating birds will carry H5N1, the avian flu sub-type that has killed 61 people in Southeast Asia and which the World Health Organization (WHO) fears is on the verge of mutating into a pandemic form like that which killed 50 to 100 million people in the fall of 1918.

As the birds arrive in the wetlands of South Asia, they will excrete the virus into the water, where it risks spreading to migrating waterfowl from Europe, as well as to domestic poultry. In the worst-case scenario, this will bring avian flu to the doorstep of the dense slums of Dhaka, Kolkata, Karachi and Mumbai.

The avian flu outbreak at Lake Qinghai was first identified by Chinese wildlife officials at the end of April. Initially it was confined to a small islet in the huge salt lake, where geese suddenly began to act spasmodically, then to collapse and die. By mid-May it had spread through the lake's entire avian population, killing thousands of birds. An ornithologist called it "the biggest and most extensively mortal avian influenza event ever seen in wild birds".

Chinese scientists, meanwhile, were horrified by the virulence of the new strain: when mice were infected they died even quicker than when injected with "genotype Z", the fearsome H5N1 variant currently killing farmers and their children in Vietnam.

Yi Guan, leader of a famed team of avian flu researchers who have been fighting the pandemic menace since 1997, complained to the British Guardian newspaper in July about the lackadaisical response of Chinese authorities to the unprecedented biological conflagration at Lake Qinghai.

"They have taken almost no action to control this outbreak. They should have asked for international support. These birds will go to India and Bangladesh and there they will meet birds that come from Europe." Yi Guan called for the creation of an international task force to monitor the wild bird pandemic, as well as the relaxation of rules that prevent the free movement of foreign scientists to outbreak zones in China.

In a paper published in the British science magazine Nature, Yi Guan and his associates also revealed that the Lake Qinghai strain was related to officially unreported recent outbreaks of H5N1 among birds in southern China. This would not be the first time that Chinese authorities have been charged with covering up an outbreak. They also lied about the nature and extent of the 2003 SARS epidemic, which originated in Guangdong but quickly spread to 25 other countries. As in the case of SARS' whistleblowers, the Chinese bureaucracy is now trying to gag avian-flu scientists, shutting down one of Yi Guan's laboratories at Shantou University and arming the conservative Agriculture Ministry with new powers over research.

Meanwhile, as anxious Indian scientists monitor bird sanctuaries throughout the sub-continent, H5N1 has spread to the outskirts of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet; to western Mongolia; and, most disturbingly, to chickens and wildfowl near the Siberian capital of Novosibirsk.

Despite frantic efforts to cull local poultry, Russian Health Ministry experts have expressed pessimism that the outbreak can be contained on the Asian side of the Urals. Siberian wildfowl migrate every fall to the Black Sea and southern Europe; another flyway leads from Siberia to Alaska and Canada.  

more

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/GH18Ae04.html

Dutch minister acts in bid to avoid outbreak

Sat 20 Aug 2005

Dutch minister acts in bid to avoid outbreak

RHIANNON EDWARD

THE Dutch agriculture ministry has ordered all commercial poultry farmers to get their fowl indoors by Monday to prevent them from catching avian flu from wild birds.

The decision follows reports from the Russian government in the past month that a strain of bird flu is moving westward with migrating wild bird populations and will probably eventually reach Europe.

Scientists call the strain H5N1 and there are fears it could badly hurt Europe's commercial poultry industry and even mutate to a more dangerous form.

The order will affect about 5.5 million of the Netherlands' 90 million chickens. In 2003, the Dutch killed more than 25 million chickens to stop a bird flu outbreak.

Other European governments are also considering preventative measures.

In Japan, the authorities announced yesterday that they had completed roughly half of their random nationwide inspections for bird flu on farms, a day after such checks revealed a new case of the disease in the country.

The inspections, due to be completed by 16 September, were launched after a weak strain of bird flu was detected in late June on some farms in Ibaraki prefecture, north-east of Tokyo. Authorities have so far examined 1,270 farms across the country.

This article:

  http://www.scotsman.com/?id=1814522005

Bird flu:

  http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=161

Websites:

  Dept of Health - Bird Flu Q&A

  http://www.dh.gov.uk/AboutUs/MinistersAndDepartmentLeaders/ChiefMedicalOfficer/Features/FeaturesArti
cle/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4102997&chk=OcYuEL

  WHO - Bird Flu fact sheet

  http://www.who.int/csr/don/2004_01_15/en/

Finland reports possible bird flu in seagull

Fri Aug 26, 2005 4:02 PM BST

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HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's Agriculture Ministry said on Friday it had found a possible case of bird flu in a seagull in the northern town of Oulu.

"As a result of a monitoring programme in Finland, we have now made an initial finding of a possible bird flu virus in a seagull," the ministry said in a statement. "The studies are ongoing and a final result will come in three weeks."

Fears of a global outbreak have risen since the avian virus spread recently from Asia into Siberia in eastern Russia and Kazakhstan. The World Health Organisation has been urging governments to stock up with antiviral drugs like Tamiflu.

Bird flu has killed 62 people in Asia since 2003 and forced the slaughter of millions of fowl. The European Union, of which Finland is a member, said earlier this week it believed there was only a remote or low chance of it striking the EU.

But after the spread of the disease into Russia, some experts have warned it could spread to the EU via migratory birds as they move to warmer areas for winter after nesting in Siberia.

Finland shares a 1,300-km (800-mile) border with Russia to the east and borders on Sweden, Norway and the Baltic Sea to its west.

The Finnish ministry said it had been improving disease protection for poultry facilities "systematically over several years". The import of live birds and poultry products from areas stricken by bird flu is banned.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=worldNews&summit=&storyid=2005-08-26T1
50217Z_01_SCH652560_RTRUKOC_0_UK-BIRDFLU-FINLAND.xml

more on BB:

http://discuss.agonist.org/yabbse/index.php?board=6;action=display;threadid=23309;start=msg241880#ms
g241880

check out the migratory habits of birds that nest in Finland. I also find myself somewhat worried about birds that nest or migrate to Africa during the year.

I've been looking for migratory routes from Russia into Europe and keep getting getting sent all over the internet but unable to find a source. I've seen the routes from China outward but not from Russia outward. Do you know a source for your neck of the woods?

Thanks for the map link. I came across this while reading at The Independent:

Local birds will spend their winter holiday in south starting from September.

Some weirdos fly to winter from Siberia to England (what a choice of a holiday resort) but I think that they take a more southern route over Germany or something. And they might orinate from a not yet infected area.

Cities here have wild duck populations around the year. I wonder how long.

This was very informative and discouraging:

http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/english/zoology/ringing/results/maps/index.htm

Especially take a look at: "All foreign recoveries of birds ringed in Finland"

It seems that no rings have been found in Antarctica only because nobody was there to collect them :-(

http://www.groms.de/

Some birds from very top of Lapland seem to winter in Kazakhstan.