BIRD FLU OUTBREAK: Frustration became fear in the Danube delta yesterday as Romanians, angered by a government-ordered cull of their poultry, discovered that the birds may be carrying a powerful avian flu virus that has killed dozens of people in Asia.
Outside the village of Ceamurlia de Jos, where three ducks tested positive for an unconfirmed strain of bird flu, vets were last night gassing and incinerating some 15,000 chickens, geese, turkeys and ducks to try and contain the outbreak.
After initially declaring the country free of the disease, Romanian officials announced yesterday that the ducks had died from the H5 avian flu virus.
Only further tests at a British laboratory will reveal whether the specific strain of flu is H5N1, which has killed more than 60 people in Asia and is believed to been have spread to Turkey by birds migrating from Russia.
Thousands of those birds also rest and feed in Romania's Danube delta - the largest wetlands in Europe - as they head south for the winter. Experts fear contact with domestic fowl could expose humans to the disease.
"I'm scared to even touch my birds now," said Rozica Stefan (59) in her yard in the village of Lunca, just outside Ceamurlia de Jos. "At first I was worried about losing them and not getting much compensation," she told The Irish Times among some of her 140 chickens and turkeys, "but now I'm more worried about this disease."
Residents of tiny Lunca expect what has happened to neighbouring Ceamurlia de Jos to happen to them next.
That means quarantine around the village, a police helicopter clattering overhead as it monitors the exclusion zone, the military bringing food supplies and vets in blue plastic gowns and masks collecting, gassing, burning and burying the birds.
Romanian TV footage of events inside Ceamurlia de Jos captured the grim atmosphere that now pervades the usually tranquil Danube delta, where most people rely on their poultry, vegetables and a few crops to survive the winter.
"They said they would give us money for the birds, but I don't need money. I need to see my birds in my yard," one weeping resident said. "The yard seems empty now. It's very miserable without my birds."
As the European Union extended its ban on Turkish live birds and poultry to those from Romania, the people of the Danube delta - where the 3000km river merges with the Black Sea - were wondering what lay in store for them.
"We're very worried," said Olga Andrei (44), who ventured out on her bicycle to the police cordon around Ceamurlia de Jos.
"The birds in my neighbour's yard have died, though mine are still all right. We've seen many diseases with our birds and some die each year, but we haven't seen this kind of thing before.
"Now everyone is wondering what they will do - people keep birds and grow corn in the fields here. There is no other work."
The quarantine is expected to be extended to other villages in the coming days, as the Romanian authorities take EU advice on how to quell the outbreak.
A plan of mass vaccination against regular flu is already under way in the area.
Experts say the remoteness and sparse population of the delta should prevent the virus from spreading too rapidly, but they warn about the difficulty of giving and receiving fast, accurate information in a place that has changed little for centuries.