Ce cu pasarile?

"I was playing with the ducks, geese and chickens in my backyard Thursday, when all of a sudden three of them fell over dead! I couldn't believe it, but since this saved us from having to kill them the normal way, we cooked them up and feasted on them before the meat went bad. Now everyone in my family has a headache, upset stomach and a fever of about 101 degrees. Is this a problem?"

While I was only joking when I e-mailed that paragraph to Mary Stonehill, Peace Corps Moldova's registered nurse, I have gotten quite the wake-up call in the past two days with regards to avian flu. Suspected cases of bird flu have occurred in Turkey and Serbia, Bulgaria is on the alert, and the first confirmed instance of H5N1, the major strain, has occurred in Ceamurlia de Jos, Romania. Ceamurlia de Jos, pronounced "Chia-moor-lee'-ah day jhos," is in the south-eastern Romanian province of Tulcea, bordering the Black Sea (yes, I had to look this up). By my estimation, Ceamurlia de Jos is about 200 km away from the southern tip of Moldova and 300 km from my village of Mereseni, as the bird flies (pun intended). This equates to a deadly disease being about as far from me as New Haven, CT is from Boston and Santa Barbara, CA is from San Jose. However, unlike residents of New Haven, Boston, Santa Barbara and San Jose, my host family and everyone in my village has 40 or more ducks, geese, chickens and turkeys in their yards that we use for eggs and food.

Reading the numbers in Ceamurlia de Jos ("de Jos" means "lower," which usually means that there's also a Ceamurlia de Sus within 15 km, but my dictionary was not very helpful in telling me that "ceamur" is a historical word that translates to "cob" or "daub") invoked great sympathy for the people there. As many as 60,000 birds will need to be killed, and I can't imagine the impact on the people of that village's living situation. With all of the poultry destroyed and the possibility of transmittance to pigs, which are approaching the prime two months for slaughtering, many people in this village will be left with nothing except the fruits and vegetables that they have preserved in their cellars. I hope that the Romanian government is taking steps to compensate the victims with poultry when the area is safe again, or the promise of subsidized meat.

But as much sympathy as I have for those people, I hope even more strongly that my sympathy does not turn into empathy. I will be watching the news carefully tonight to see what Moldova is doing to prevent the spread of disease. I believe that poultry imports from Romania and Turkey were shut down late last week, but if the disease is spread through wild migratory birds, there seems to be little possible in the way of prevention. What I read is that poultry should be kept gated inside the yard and kept away from wild birds, which we already do at our house (although not everyone in the village does).

The Peace Corps Medical Office has vaccinated all volunteers in Moldova for flu, but that can only build our immunity to the most common strains from this year, not a new strain that might mutate this fall and easily pass from human to human. We also have Tamiflu available in the PCMO. More information will be coming in the November edition of our Peace Corps Moldova newsletter, The Grapevine, and an informational sheet was in my cubby in the PC office Saturday. As for now, though, I'm perfectly sanatosВ (healthy) and not overly worried. Transmission directly from birds to humans is extremely rare, but it is nevertheless a slight possibility, and the possible pandemic that so many people seem to worried about could start right here in Moldova. To everyone in America, enjoy the next year before you have to worry about this stuff, too.