A grim march west

After being contained in Asia for most of 2003 through 2005, the bird flu virus has since made a much faster march toward Europe, Africa and the United States:

The first human deaths from H5N1 outside Asia, in January 2006 in Turkey, heightened concern about the spread of the disease, but the World Health Organization pointed out that the deaths were among people who had been in close cotact with infected birds, and were not passed from human to human.
The first outbreaks in the European Union were recorded in January 2006 when cases were confirmed in wild swans in Italy, Greece, Germany and Austria.
Within weeks, cases were confirmed in Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary and France, where mass vaccination of ducks and geese on farms was carried out.
At the end of February, the first case involving a cat in Europe was discovered on a German island where a number of wild birds had died from the disease earlier.
The virus also reached Nigeria in February 2006
In mid-March, human deaths were confirmed in Azerbaijan, where what is believed to be the first canine case was also diagnosed, in a stray dog.
The first case in the UK was confirmed on April 6, in a swan found dead on the eastern coast of Scotland.
And in Spain, a great crested grebe was determined to have the disease in early July.

SOURCE: BBC.com