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PARIS : H5N1 avian influenza has been detected in Africa for the first time, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said, reporting an outbreak among poultry in northern Nigeria that had killed 40,000 birds.
The outbreak occurred on a large commercial battery-chicken farm in Jaji, Kaduna state, the world veterinary watchdog said on Wednesday.
"The OIE/FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation) reference laboratory for avian influenza in Padova, Italy, has characterised the isolate as a highly pathogenic H5N1," it said.
"The OIE, together with the FAO, will take immediate action and coordinate a common response to this event. A team of experts will be sent to the affected area in order to assess the situation and provide technical advice to the national authorities."
The farm had 46,000 birds, comprising egg-laying chickens as well as ostriches and geese, before the outbreak occurred on January 10.
A total of 42,000 had become infected, 40,000 of which had died, the OIE said, citing a notification from the Nigerian ministry of agriculture.
The Nigerian authorities said they had taken measures to tackle the outbreak through disinfection, quarantine and restrictions on animal movements, the OIE added.
Jaji is a rural town in a farming district of northern Nigeria, 300 kilometres (185 miles) north of Abuja, on the main trading route from the capital through Kaduna and Zaria to Kano.
OIE spokeswoman Maria Zampaglione told AFP it was the first time that H5N1 avian influenza had been detected in Africa.
The agency's deputy director general, Jean-Luc Angot, told AFP: "This is a worrying development, as we had been afraid that the (African) continent could be affected. It means that the disease has got a foothold on the continent."
The H5N1 bird flu virus erupted in Hong Kong in 1997, where it killed six people.
It surfaced again in Asia in 2003, circulating among poultry flocks in Southeast Asia, China and South Korea before spreading to the south-eastern corner of Europe in October 2005, touching Balkan countries and Turkey.
The virus is highly dangerous for chickens, ducks and geese, and can be transmitted to humans in close proximity.
According to the latest official toll compiled by the World Health Organisation (WHO), there have been 165 recorded human cases of H5N1 infection, 88 of them mortal.
In its present form, the H5N1 is not known to be transmissible from human to human.
The big worry is that it could pick up genes from the conventional human flu virus that would make it not only lethal, but highly contagious, too. Thus the longer and more widely it circulates, the greater the risk that this could happen.
On Monday, officials in another northern Nigerian state, Kano, said that 60,000 chickens had died locally. Preliminary lab tests said that fowl cholera, a bacteria, was to blame, they said.
Angot said Africa was especially vulnerable to bird flu, noting that many countries on the continent were ill-equipped and unprepared to cope with the disease.
Tackling bird flu requires a sound, well-funded infrastructure, he said.
It needs veterinarians on the ground to spot the disease in its early stages; a reliable early warning network to record cases and inform farmers and the public about what to do; resolute action to contain and then stamp outbreaks; and compensation for producers to encourage them to honestly advise the authorities of disease outbreaks. - AFP/de
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