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Nigerians vow to fight bird flu
16/02/2006 14:30 - (SA)
Kano - After a shaky start, Nigeria's bid to prevent Africa's first bird flu outbreak from spreading to humans gathered momentum on Thursday after President Olusegun Obasanjo vowed to work tirelessly to eradicate the virus.
The top health official in the northern state of Kano, one of the epicentres of the outbreak, said the provincial government was setting up a team of monitors and a special health facility.
Kano health commissioner Sanda Mohammed said a seven-person task force would oversee a sensitisation campaign and train health workers who would fan out across the state.
He said: "A treatment centre will also be set up, where patients with avian flu infections will be kept and treated although nobody has been confirmed to have avian flu."
Bird flu infection
Mohammed said: "A surveillance team will also be going around hospitals to take records of fresh medical cases with the view to quickly identify any bird flu infection at the earliest stage.
"Our decision to form this committee was informed by the urgent need to contain this virus to birds and ensure that it doesn't mutate to humans especially in a society like ours, where people need to live side by side with chickens."
The move came eight days after the deadly H5N1 strain of the avian flu virus was detected at a farm in northern Kaduna State, leading to the slaughter of 45 000 chickens on the farm.
Late on Wednesday, President Olusegun Obasanjo met with international donors and announced the formation of a special monitoring cell to track and stem the growing epidemic, which had wreaked havoc in northern Nigeria.
Ministers told to work 24 hours
He said: "We shall all continue to work until the flu is stamped out."
The president's office said Obasanjo had "instructed the ministers of agriculture, health and information and national orientation to be at the centre 24 hours a day, until the flu is contained".
According to reports, the central monitoring centre was being set up in Abuja on Thursday and was due to be up and running by the end of the day.
Obasanjo inspected the centre early on Thursday and was followed by top government officials, including the agriculture minister. However, a United Nations official said the action was long overdue.
Poultry, ducks, ostriches culled
The official said: "It is regrettable that the committee has not met so far as co-ordination between the different players is absolutely essential ... the delays have been a little too long."
Since the outbreak was first detected, tens of thousands of poultry, ducks and ostriches had been culled, burned and buried in Nigeria.
One of the main worries of the government was to prevent the spread of the epidemic to the densely populated south and the economic capital, Lagos, which was home to at least 14 million people.
On Wednesday, Nigeria banned backyard poultry in Abuja, but had so far ignored a call from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation to close meat markets in Kano and Kaduna.
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