A parrot that died in quarantine in the United Kingdom was confirmed Sunday to have died of avian influenza, which it is believed to have contracted while in quarantine with birds from Taiwan. Quarantine officials are now reviewing the existing policy of holding birds from different countries in the same area. This was the United Kingdom's first death from bird flu since 1992, but the country is able to maintain its disease-free status as the infected bird was never released from quarantine.

Dead birds from the Greek island of Oinouses, originally feared to have died from avian influenza, tested negative for the virus over the weekend. Although Greece appears to have been spared the virus for the moment, attempts to lift Albanian, Macedonian and Bulgarian bans on the import of Greek poultry have thus far proved futile.

The European Commission is discussing banning the import of pet birds in an attempt to prevent further cases of bird flu following the death of a South American parrot in the United Kingdom.

Following the discovery of two dead swans in an area in which bird flu has already been detected, Croatia is preparing to cull more of its poultry, officials said Monday. Some 13,000 birds were culled in Croatia over the weekend.

Russian officials have culled 53 birds and quarantined the village of Tambov, 250 miles south of Moscow, following the detection of H5N1 in 12 dead hens, it was announced Monday.

Israel and Jordan will work together to combat bird flu in the region, officials reported Monday. Plans include the stockpiling of anti-viral drugs and the monitoring of migratory birds across their shared border. Although invited to join the preventive alliance, the Palestinian Authority has thus far not accepted, Jordan's Petra news agency reported.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is sending a team of experts to Indonesia to prevent further spread of the H5N1 virus, which already has become endemic in several regions. Animal-health workers will perform house-by-house searches of the country to identify sick birds before coordinating responses, to include slaughter and vaccination, with the Indonesian government.

In a positive development, Thai officials have confirmed that the 7-year-old boy whose father died of bird flu last week has fully recovered. Making good news even better, Thai public health officials have confirmed that he did not contract the disease from his father, indicating that the virus has not yet become transmissible between humans.

Thailand has announced further measures designed to combat the spread of avian influenza. Hospitals are to question sick patients about any contact they might have had with birds before falling ill. In a move similar to that of the UNFAO in Indonesia, 900,000 Thai public health workers will search the country for suspected cases of the disease.

Discussions of bird flu are expected to dominate the World Trade Organization meeting to be held in Geneva Tuesday. The cost and availability of anti-virals such as Tamiflu has been the focus of much public attention over the last week, and the WTO has already released guidelines "stressing that countries were entitled to issue 'compulsory licenses' allowing generic manufacturers to override patents," the Financial Times reported Monday.

The concern with avian influenza is that it might combine with a form of influenza transmissible from human to human and set off a deadly pandemic.

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