ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO AVIAN INFLUENZA SPREAD IN THE WORLD
Zoonotic influenza together with rabies and antimicrobial resistance are three high-priority areas of focus of such international organizations as the World Animal Health Organization, World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization (UN). As some influenza viruses have a serious pandemic potential and there is a threat for international business and human health avian influenza is the focus of many multidisciplinary studies aimed at forecasting the probability of outbreaks of avian influenza in wild and domestic birds in different parts of the world and determination of key factors able to increase or decrease this probability. The scientists from different countries of the world suggest that certain climate indexes and geographic characteristics of the wild fowl natural habitat can influence the emergence of the influenza outbreaks. As the human activities influence the climate and landscape to a great extent, modelling and forecasting of avian influenza spread depending on the changing ecological determinants are becoming really important. Due to the fact that the avian virus ecology is complex the results obtained by different research groups in the world are fragmented and a systemic assessment and further analysis are required. This review summarizes data of different studies on major environmental factors both quantitative variables and qualitative parameters which proved to have a statistically significant impact on influenza spread in wild fowl in different regions of the world.