tetano
Editor, Senior Moderator
Moscow - Russia's top farm animal health inspector on Friday said Ukraine must create a 100-kilometre-wide, pig-free zone along its eastern border, or Europe would risk another outbreak of the deadly swine flu virus.
Russian health workers have in recent months identified more than a dozen cases of the virus' presence, the majority in pigs kept at small private farms near the country's western border with Ukraine, said Nikolai Vlasov, director of the inspection agency Rosselkhoznadzor.
The only way to prevent the virus spreading into Ukrainian pig populations and onwards into Europe would be for Kiev to order the slaughter of practically all pigs along its eastern border with Russia in a belt of territory 100 kilometres wide, Vlasov told the Interfax news agency.
'Factually this is the only way we can block the virus' transfer to western Europe,' he said.
A pig kept permanently indoors might not need slaughtering, but there should be no other exceptions, he said.
There was no immediate response to Vlasov's remarks from Ukraine's Ministry of Health.
Russian health authorities from January through September have tested some 6,000 carcasses of a total 31,000 slaughtered pigs, and found 232 to be infected with swine flu - an infection rate some 30 times greater than in 2010, Vlasov said.
Some strains of swine flu are transferable to humans and, if the person's health is weak or is otherwise susceptible to flu, the disease could be fatal.
One of the most virulent strains of swine flu is the H1N1 strain, which is sometimes called African swine flu. The last major swine flu pandemic in Europe took place in 2009, and is thought to have been responsible for some 6,000 deaths.
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/n...t-protect-EU-from-swine-flu-with-sterile-zone
Russian health workers have in recent months identified more than a dozen cases of the virus' presence, the majority in pigs kept at small private farms near the country's western border with Ukraine, said Nikolai Vlasov, director of the inspection agency Rosselkhoznadzor.
The only way to prevent the virus spreading into Ukrainian pig populations and onwards into Europe would be for Kiev to order the slaughter of practically all pigs along its eastern border with Russia in a belt of territory 100 kilometres wide, Vlasov told the Interfax news agency.
'Factually this is the only way we can block the virus' transfer to western Europe,' he said.
A pig kept permanently indoors might not need slaughtering, but there should be no other exceptions, he said.
There was no immediate response to Vlasov's remarks from Ukraine's Ministry of Health.
Russian health authorities from January through September have tested some 6,000 carcasses of a total 31,000 slaughtered pigs, and found 232 to be infected with swine flu - an infection rate some 30 times greater than in 2010, Vlasov said.
Some strains of swine flu are transferable to humans and, if the person's health is weak or is otherwise susceptible to flu, the disease could be fatal.
One of the most virulent strains of swine flu is the H1N1 strain, which is sometimes called African swine flu. The last major swine flu pandemic in Europe took place in 2009, and is thought to have been responsible for some 6,000 deaths.
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/n...t-protect-EU-from-swine-flu-with-sterile-zone