The Department of Health confirmed yesterday that vaccine to protect the public against the spread of the potentially deadly bird flu will be available early next year.
The United Nations predicted the disease will hit Europe and its Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) urged nations at risk to increase surveillance and prepare national emergency plans. It said the virus is likely to be carried over long distances by wild water birds.
Birds flying from Siberia, where the virus has recently spread, may carry the disease to the Caspian and Black Seas "in the foreseeable future," the Rome-based agency said.
"These regions and countries in the Balkans could become a potential gateway to central Europe for the virus," the FAO said.
Bird migration routes also run across Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine and some Mediterranean countries and bird flu outbreaks in these areas were possible.
While expressing optimism that European countries could stamp out bird flu before the virus took hold and spread to humans, the FAO sounded a cautionary note on this.
FAO's chief veterinary officer, Joseph Domenech, expressed concerns that "poor countries in south-east Europe, where wild birds from Asia mingle with others from northern Europe, may lack the capacity to detect and deal with out breaks of bird flu".
In the statement, FAO also warned that "as long as the H5N1 virus circulates in poultry, humans continue to be at risk".
It advised countries at risk, especially those along the routes of migratory birds, to step up surveillance of domestic poultry and wild birds and to prepare emergency plans. It said affected countries should battle the bird flu virus at its origin, in poultry.
"Close contacts between humans, domestic poultry and wildlife should be reduced and closely monitored. On farms and in markets, domestic birds should be strictly separated from wild animals to the greatest extent possible," said the agency. "Vaccinating poultry could also be considered in at-risk situations."