[The situation and preventive measures against the spread of avian influenza on the territory of the country].

The Russian Federation, as the whole world community, is anxious about the established situation associated with the prevalence of avian influenza and a threat of its pandemic. Today avian influenza is a complex, i.e. medical, veterinary, social, and economic, problem. Since December 2003, the world has notified an avian influenza panepizootic that has covered 54 countries to date. Despite emergency measures to prevent the prevalence of this infection, resulting in the elimination of more than 100 million poultries, the virus has fixed in the natural population of wild birds and gained the capacity to infect human beings, which serves as a guide for considering it a possible predictor of pandemic virus. According to the WHO classification, the Russian Federation is at Step II of an interpandemic period when cases of the disease are not notified among the population; however, the subtype circulating among the animals can cause the disease to sufficient probability. To prevent mass mortality of influenza virus-infected birds and human contagion in the inhabited localities wherein epizootic is seen, the Russian Federation has organized and implemented a package of antiepizootic, veterinary-sanitary, and sanitary-antiepidemic measures, including on-line exchange of information on the epizootic and epidemiological situation with veterinary surveillance bodies; farmstead rounds are made for the early detection of ill persons among human beings, for which an additional medical personnel has been picked out; daily medical monitoring of the population and the workers of poultry factories, wherein poultry death has been recorded, has been organized; the places of annihilation of utilized fallen and forcedly killed poultry are notified; supervision of the sanitary and veterinary state of the market where alive poultry and ornamental birds are sold has been tightened; measures to lay in a stock of chemotherapeutical and chemoprophylactic agents producing an antiinfluenza effect, as well as that of disinfectants have been taken; poultry and other birds are daily examined. Three inactivated emulsified veterinary vaccines against avian influenza have been currently designed. The calculated size of poultry to be vaccinated is 74.6 million. Double vaccination requires that 150 million doses of the agent be manufactured.