TURKEY: The Turkish health minister claimed yesterday: "Bird flu is totally under control." Recep Akdag said: "The outbreak in winged animals occurred in one area and has been contained."
The EU announced earlier it had found the H5N1 bird flu virus in Turkish poultry - the first confirmation of the virulent H5N1 in Europe.
The village outside Balikesir in western Turkey, where 1,800 turkeys died, has been under a two-mile quarantine for the past week.
Authorities culled 7,600 domestic birds and disinfected five hectares of land in the area to contain the highly-contagious virus, officials said.
Turkey asked the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holding AG for one million boxes of a standard flu medicine as a precaution against a possible pandemic.
Meanwhile, Europe's drug regulator said yesterday it could approve within days any effective vaccine against bird flu in humans under new fast-track procedures.
The European Medicines Agency's new approach is based on the concept of "core dossiers", allowing information to be submitted to a committee of experts in advance of a vaccine having completed full development.
"Once the specific strain of the influenza virus is known, the committee could approve a variation to this core dossier, following a "rolling review", within a few days," the London-based agency said in a statement.
Outbreaks of bird flu at the weekend in Romania and Turkey have triggered fears that the highly-contagious disease could advance into Europe.
Several drug companies are working to develop a vaccine that may be effective against pandemic flu, among them the makers of shots against normal seasonal flu. - (AP, Reuters)