Nigeria battles bird flu
2006-02-20 14:01
Kano - United Nations health officials held meetings on Monday to assess the damage in Nigeria's bird flu-ravaged north as an international expert said Africans were less likely to catch the virus than Asians.
A team of UN World Health Organisation (WHO) officials held a second day of meetings with local monitors in the northern state of Kano, one of the epicentres of Nigeria's outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus, to assess the damage and a clean-up drive.
Meanwhile, an epidemiologist from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) told AFP that people in Africa were safer than those in Asia, where H5N1 has killed around 90 people - about half those it infected - since 2003.
"The only difference is that in Asia there are more chickens living in close proximity to humans. There has been no mutation of the virus (here) up until now, thank God," Boubacar Seck said.
Ban on poultry movement
H5N1 can be passed from the carcasses of infected birds to humans, but not, in its current form, between humans.
"The insalubriousness of Africa does not change anything, the virus does not come from there," he said, adding: "There are less chances that there will be as many human cases in Nigeria as in Asia."
India, the world's second most populous nation with just under 500 million poultry according to the most recent livestock census, last week became the latest country in Asia to fall prey to bird flu.
Nigeria, the first country in Africa to confirm the presence of H5N1, on Saturday finally paid heed to UN warnings and banned the movement of poultry across the sprawling country of 36 states.
Egypt announced seven outbreaks of the virus in three areas on Friday, and ordered the slaughter of all poultry in their proximity.
UN health officials fear that the virus might get a hold on Africa's teeming cities, where many people's immune systems are compromised by AIDS and malnutrition.
They also fear the disease could mutate into a form transmissible between humans and become a worldwide scourge, killing millions.
Emmanuel Ijewere, one of Nigeria's bigger poultry farmers and a former president of the Nigerian Red Cross, said the cost of the bird flu to the economy could be as high as 50 billion naira ($380m).
Despite criticism that the government's action had been slow and insufficient, Nigerian officials voiced optimism for the first time over the weekend that the crisis was becoming manageable.
Bird flu has been confirmed in three northern states but there have been several suspected outbreaks in other states.
One of the government's chief concerns is to prevent its spread to the densely-populated south and in Lagos, Africa's most populous city which is home to at least 14 million people.
Nigeria's health minister has meanwhile asked for 250 000 doses of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu.