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Birds with birdflu imported into Belgium
25 October 2004
Belgian authorities are trying to trace a Thai man who smuggled two bird-flu infected Asian eag-les into Brussels airport last week.
The crested hawk eagles were put down immediately after being discovered last Monday at Brussels airport, but tests only later showed the eagles had avian flu and by that time the Thai man had been released. The disease has killed over 30 people in Thailand and Vietnam and 100m birds across Asia have been culled.
Anti-viral treatment
Belgian officials say the eagles never left a quarantined area, adding that the smuggler is the only person at real risk of having contracted the disease. "The risk is, above all, great for the person who imported these birds illegally, because we dont know very well how he handled them," public health expert Rene Snacken told RTL-TVI television.
He said that the other passengers of the Bangkok-Brussels flight via Vienna were at little risk because they had not come into contact with the mans bags, which contained the two live birds inside plastic tubes.
However, health officials said passengers who took the same flights as the man should see their doctor as a precaution.
Customs officers and scientists who examined the birds were being given preventive anti-viral treatment.
Two parrots held at the same inspection centre have also been destroyed.
Ban imposed
Other birds that left the airport before the eagles were found to be infected, have been quarantined in the Netherlands and Russia, where authorities have been alerted to the incident.
Belgium and other European countries have imposed a ban on live birds and bird products from several parts of Asia in the wake of an outbreak of avian flu earlier this year.
Belgium and the Netherlands experienced their own outbreak of bird flu last year, during which one Dutch vet died and millions of poultry were slaughtered.
But it was not the same lethal H5N1 strain that has affected Asia.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3948597.stm
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