(Adds detail throughout) By John Zodzi LOME, June 22 (Reuters) - Tests have confirmed an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 birdflu virus at a poultry farm in the West African country of Togo, Agriculture Minister Yves Nagou said on Friday. Samples from the semi-industrial farm at Sigbehoue, about 45 km (28 miles) east of the capital Lome, had been sent for laboratory tests in neighbouring Ghana after the sudden mass death of poultry at the site. "It is confirmed. The results from the laboratory in Accra have detected the H5N1 type of virus," Nagou told Reuters. Preliminary tests in Togo had already indicated the presence of H5N1. Togo became the seventh West African country hit by the H5N1 virus after Ghana, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria. The worst affected country in West Africa, Nigeria, reported sub-Saharan Africa's only confirmed human death from H5N1 early this year. The farm in Sigbehoue, close to the border with Benin, received a consignment of chicks in February from Ghana, where the deadly strain of avian flu was detected in early May, the minister said. Ghana imposed an export ban on poultry last month. The farm has been sealed off and the remainder of its poultry culled and incinerated after about 2,000 chickens out of a total stock of 3,000 had died in two days, officials said. A meeting of 14 francophone African countries in the Malian capital Bamako on Thursday agreed on a six-month roadmap for tackling the epidemic focused on the management of poultry. The H5N1 virus mainly affects birds, but experts fear it could change into a form easily transmitted from person to person and lead to a pandemic. So far, most human cases can be traced to direct or indirect contact with infected birds and hundreds of millions of birds have died or been culled. Bird flu has been spreading through southeast Asia, killing two people in Vietnam this month, the first deaths there since 2005. Globally, the H5N1 virus has killed nearly 200 people out of over 300 known cases, according to the World Health Organisation.
