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Bird flu could be major problem for Africa
JOHANNESBURG -- Bird flu has spread to Africa, and experts fear that containing it will be a major problem on a continent where backyard chickens are the norm, health infrastructure is weak and many governments have little in the way of funding or plans to deal with an avian flu outbreak.

In northern Nigeria, where a deadly strain of bird flu began killing chickens this month, cheap chicken has flooded local meat markets, local media report. Poultry farm workers, faced with thousands of dead birds, are working without protective gear to toss them onto open fires. Farmers, not yet certain what government compensation they will receive, remain reluctant to report dying birds.

"If the situation in Nigeria gets out of control, it will have a devastating impact on the poultry population in the region, it will seriously damage the livelihoods of millions of people and it will increase the exposure of humans to the virus," warned Samuel Jutzi, director of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, which has rushed experts to Nigeria to try to contain the outbreak there.

Nigeria's new cases "prove that no country is risk-free and that we are facing a serious international crisis," he said.

International experts confirmed this week that the H5N1 strain of bird flu had been identified on at least four poultry farms in three states of northern and central Nigeria. What is unclear is whether the deadly virus—also recently discovered in Germany, Austria, Greece and Iran—reached the West African nation through migrating wild birds, in poultry imports or by some other method.

What worries international flu experts, who have poured into Nigeria, is that Africa could prove an ideal place for the disease, which is now deadly to birds but only rarely passed to human beings, to mutate into a form capable of infecting and killing large numbers of people.

So far, the disease has killed just over 90 people, primarily in Asia and the Middle East. But earlier flu pandemics that made the jump to human beings—like the Spanish flu of 1918-19—have killed tens of millions worldwide.

Across Africa, as in Asia, "there's very close interaction between farmers and their birds," many of whom run free in and around homes, said Duncan Mwangi, an immunologist with the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya. "African governments now have a huge task of trying to educate the public about the dangers. Without that, a lot of people will be exposed to the disease."

Africa has in recent months rushed to prepare to combat bird flu. South Africa and Morocco have been testing migratory birds on their lakes and wetlands for the disease, and Malawi recently determined that a die-off of wild birds there was due to bad weather rather than avian flu. More than 40 of the continent's governments sent representatives to a World Health Organization meeting on the problem last month in Central Africa.
--courtesy Chicago Tribune

Bird Flu: Fears Over Spread to Humans in Africa
DESPITE efforts by Federal Government and United Nation (UN) Agencies to curb spread of avian influenza (bird flu), there are strong indications that the disease may have infected people in the country. Fears that the virus has invaded some patients particularly in the North, where the first case was recorded, peaked last Sunday when officials of Federal Ministry of Health, waited for test results on two children.

When confirmed, the two patients would be the first Africans infected with the deadly H5NI bird flu virus.

Since the out break, in poultry farms in Kaduna, federal government has imposed a quarantine on the affected farms. Champion Health Forum learnt farms in affected areas recorded increased poultry deaths, thus leading to fears that the virus may be widespread. Meanwhile teams of experts from Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and World Health Organisation (WHO) arrived the country Sunday to provide technical assistance to government in order to battle the epidemic.

Experts fear that the highly pathogenic H5NI strain may "mutate into a form that can spread from human to human and cause a global flu pandemic that could kill millions.

WHO's epidemologist Global Influenza program Dr. Michael Perdue at a media briefing in Geneva, Switzerland weekend said, "We are concerned that this particular strain H5NI has moved from Asia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Romania, Ukraine, Turkey, Iraq to Nigeria."

We don't know presently the risk of the virus infecting humans in Africa, but we are concerned that the virus has infected and killed some birds in the continent," Perdue said.

According to the WHO official, there is anecdotal evidence of outbreak in birds in Kaduna, and Kano. He maintained that "thus far we have no evidence of any human infections but it represents a fear that this virus is being carried by amigratory water fowl."
--courtesy allafrica.com

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