EU Ministers in emergency talks as bird flu reaches Europe
European Union foreign ministers are holding emergency talks today on the widening bird flu scare, a day after tests in Greece indicated the virus had reached the EU for the first time. The EU is preparing to ban sales of live birds and poultry from the Aegean Sea region of Chios, pending tests on samples taken from turkeys feared infected with the deadly Asian H5N1 strain. Poultry from Turkey and Romania has already been banned by the EU as bird flu found there was confirmed as H5N1. Tests were also being carried out on birds in Bulgaria and Croatia. Officials said the foreign ministers are to discuss the international response to the westward spread of bird flu and take stock of EU nations’ readiness to deal with a possible pandemic. The EU stepped up biosecurity measures and installed early detection systems along the migratory paths of birds to prevent contamination of domestic flocks. But there are concerns that European nations lack stockpiles of vaccines and anti-virals to cope with a major outbreak. The World Health Organisation recommends governments keep stocks of anti-viral drugs and regular human flu vaccines to inoculate at least 25% of their populations. European officials say the 25 nations in the EU, as well as Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, have only 10 million doses now for an area of almost 500 million people, and will have only 46 million doses by the end of 2007.
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