Bird flu scare in Africa

2006-02-09 09:58

Abuja - Africa for the first time faces a catastrophic epidemic of bird flu after the deadly H5N1 strain spread to the continent, devastating poultry and threatening humans.

Agriculture minister Amadu Bello said that for the past month chickens at a farm in Jaji in northern Nigeria had been dying of the disease, which Nigerian officials at first mistook for a bacterial infection known as bird cholera.

Bello said now that the infection had been correctly identified at a United Nations laboratory in Italy, quarantine and culling procedures had been put in place.

Samuel Jutzi, head of the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation's (FAO) animal health division, said: "If the situation in Nigeria gets out of control, it will have a devastating impact on the poultry population in the region.

Sick bird rushed to market

He warned: "It will seriously damage the livelihoods of millions of people and it will increase the exposure of humans to the virus."

But traders in Kano, northern Nigeria's main commercial centre, said that similar mystery disease outbreaks had been reported across the region and that farmers were rushing sick birds to market in order to avoid a blockade.

The World Health Organisation said it was "very concerned" about the outbreak.

As South Africa and Mauritania led an expected rush to ban Nigerian poultry imports, experts warned that Africa's run-down public health infrastructure would struggle to cope.

Worrying development

Jean-Luc Angot, deputy director general of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), said: "This is a worrying development ... It means that the disease has got a foothold on the continent."

He warned: "Africa doesn't have sufficient infrastructure for veterinary surveillance and control. We think that other countries will be affected."

In Nairobi, Phillip Muthoka, a senior member of the Kenyan health ministry's Avian Influenza Task Force, said: "Many countries have trade links with Nigeria, this is serious."

He said that Kenya and other East African countries, which like Nigeria were threatened by migrating birds bringing flu from infected areas of Asia and Europe, were facing a drought, which could make matters worse.

Avian flu

Muthoka warned: "People are malnourished and their immune systems are down. Also, with the high rates of HIV/Aids infection, this has the potential to be a catastrophe.

"The government is cash-strapped already from the drought. If avian flu comes home to roost this is going to be an uphill battle."

Duncan Mwangi, an immunologist with Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute, said that culling birds was the only way to be sure of preventing the spread of the disease.

He said: "Now that this has been diagnosed in Africa, the disease is hitting closer to home. Migration of wild birds is still posing a threat. The only way to deal with the disease is through culling. There is no other way."

- AFP