Nigeria guarding against H5N1

2006-02-14 16:20

Kano - Nigerian scientists examined blood samples from farm workers on Tuesday as foreign experts arrived to help protect Africa from its possible first human cases of the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Experts from the United States Centres for Disease Control (CDC) came to help study the outbreak, amid renewed fears that the deadly virus could spread into Nigeria's densely populated south after devastating northern chicken farms.

The health commissioner in the northern state of Kaduna, Mohammed Abubakar Bala, said tests were being carried out on workers from the site of Africa's first confirmed H5N1 outbreak among chickens.

He said: "We are still examining the staff of Sambawa farm. It's an ongoing exercise we haven't concluded. The examination continues today."

The Nigerian country chief for the World Health Organisation (WHO), Mohammed Belhocine, said though Nigeria was not yet equipped to test for H5N1 in humans, international "teams are being deployed".

People avoiding the workers

He said: "Tests on human samples will take place in Nigeria and abroad."

Sambawa farm worker Ibrahim Hassan said he and some of his colleagues had given blood samples in the past two days and had been asked to come back later.

He said: "But, we are facing a problem. People keep away from us, thinking that we carrying the virus with us.

"Some even say we should be quarantined. This gives us lots of worries."

However, there was good news for two children who fell ill last week on a smaller poultry farm near Sambawa. While it had yet to be confirmed they never had H5N1, officials said they seemed to be out of danger.

Abubakar Bala said: "We have attended to those children and they had completely recovered by the time we went to their house.

"However, we took them to hospital, where they were examined. Because of their history of contact with the birds, we are monitoring them closely."

Belhocine confirmed that the WHO was aware of the case and the children appeared to be doing well under observation.

A US embassy statement said medical and veterinary experts from Atlanta and a laboratory team from the agency's centre in Kenya were due in Nigeria on Tuesday to work alongside the WHO.

Fears it might mutate

Since 2003, the H5N1 strain of bird flu has killed about 90 people - about half of those it has infected - and spread from southeast Asia through China to Turkey and parts of eastern and southern Europe.

The disease is highly infectious among birds, including poultry, and could be passed to humans.

Doctors fear that if it mutates into a form transmissible among people, it could trigger a flu pandemic and kill tens of millions.

Last week, Nigeria confirmed Africa's first case of the disease, which experts believed was spread by infected migratory birds.

- AFP