- Title: ISRAEL: Israel culls poultry/H5N1 not confirmed
- Date: 19th March 2006
- Summary: CLOSE OF (SOUNDBITE) (English) ISRAELI DR. SHIMON BERG HEAD DIRECTOR OF THE AVIAN DISEASE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL MINISTRY SAYING: "More than that we have a very good cooperation with the Palestinian Authority I myself talk to them four or five times a day and I think that is something we are working on very hardly we also doing some checking, tests for them and until n
- Embargoed: 3rd April 2006 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Israel
- Country: Israel
- Topics: Environment / Natural World,Health
- Reuters ID: LVADMYATBQ86V3HIY91NJCLL5QBM
- Story Text: Israeli workers culled thousands of turkeys and chickens on Saturday
(March 18) as a senior Agriculture Ministry official said further tests were
needed to confirm the country's first H5N1 bird flu cases in poultry.
Agricultural Ministry officials said workers had started culling 70,000
turkeys at the two southern farms. They said workers were killing the turkeys
in the infected areas by poisoning their drinking water. The carcasses would
be buried in pits.
Up to half a million turkeys and chickens would be killed, they said.
Workers would also soon destroy flocks at two separate farms where the
virus was suspected to have spread.
Near the West Bank city of Hebron, Palestinian customs officials
intercepted two trucks carrying poultry which had entered illegally.
Palestinian officials said they would kill the 2,600 chickens in the trucks.
Bulldozers later started burying the chickens alive in a pit by dumping
soil on them.
In a rare act of cooperation, Israel has been testing dead fowl found
in the West Bank and Gaza on behalf of the Palestinian Authority.
"We know for sure that it is H5, we are still working on the N but
it is very very probably that it is H5N1 and we are probably talking about
this virus. Until today we are controlling the situation, I think everything
is going very vary smooth according to the plan. We are now we don't have any
suspicious cases more so we hope maybe this will be the end of the story but
you can never know," Doctor Shimon Berg, head director of the Avian
disease department of agricultural minsitry, described.
The H5N1 strain has spread across Asia, Africa and Europe and killed at
least 98 people worldwide since 2003.
Although hard to catch, people can contract bird flu by coming into
contact with infected birds. Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a
form that could pass easily between humans, triggering a pandemic in which
millions could die.
Four farm workers feared to have caught the virus had not been
infected, the Health Ministry said.
Three who worked at the two southern farms had been admitted to
isolation units at a hospital. A fourth who had been in contact with turkeys
at another farm was also hospitalised. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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