LOME, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Laboratory tests have confirmed a fresh outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in Togo after around 4,000 poultry died at a village in the small West African state last week, the government said on Wednesday.

Tests conducted in Ghana on samples from dead chickens taken from the village of Agbata, on the eastern fringes of the capital Lome, showed the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus.

"The results from Ghana confirm the presence of the strain of the H5N1 virus that is responsible for bird flu," Agriculture and Livestock Minister Kossi Messan Ewovor said in a statement.

After the outbreak, Togo, which reported several cases of H5N1 last year, had imposed a quarantine on the village.

The H5N1 strain, which has swept through bird populations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, only rarely affects humans but has killed 245 of the 387 people infected globally so far, according to the World Health Organisation.

People can catch the virus from close contact with infected birds or by eating their meat if not properly prepared, but scientists fear the virus could mutate and jump between humans, threatening a much deadlier flu pandemic.

Outbreaks in Africa have caused concern because epidemiologists fear the continent's widespread poverty, lack of proper veterinary and medical facilities and huge unregulated farming sector could allow outbreaks to go unnoticed longer, increasing the risk of the virus mutating. (Reporting by John Zodzi; Writing by Daniel Magnowski; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Richard Balmforth)

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