20 Feb 2006: ISS Today: Nigeria: Confirms Bird Flu Spread
20 FEBRUARY 2006: "NIGERIA CONFIRMS BIRD FLU SPREAD”
BBC NEWS
The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flue has been found on three more farms in northern Nigeria, where thousands of poultry have died recently. Officials said tests had confirmed bird flu on farms in two states other than those where Africa’s first cases of bird flu were confirmed 8th February. The World Health Organization has called for a massive public education campaign to stop the Avian flu from spreading to humans.
Commentary:
From time to time, experts in epidemiology sound dire warnings of the possible recurrence of a global influenza outbreak that could rival in extent that of 1918, in which at least 40 million people died. The discovery of a bird flu virus in 2003 called H5N1 is the latest potential threat to be identified in this way. Starting in East Asia, the outbreak has already caused almost 100 deaths among humans in that part of the world and has now been traced to wildfowl and poultry in Nigeria, where it possibly arrived with migrating flocks.
Now the problem is that it has infected and killed several thousands of domestic poultry in a number of Nigerian states, and there is little sign that the pandemic can be contained geographically. Having apparently played down the seriousness of the outbreak initially, the Nigerian authorities are now reacting, but whether they will receive the full cooperation of poultry farmers who stand to have their entire stocks culled and destroyed remains a moot point. Government promises of timely and adequate compensation are likely to meet with scepticism in a country where corruption has been elevated to an art form, and it seems very possible that many farmers will try to sell on their birds before these succumb to disease or extermination.
Were such a development to occur, the dangers would be not only of a spread of the avian virus but of the greater likelihood of its transmutation into a strain deadly to humans.
The issue here, however, is not to emphasise the dangers of this particular outbreak, but to point out that, altruism apart, it is in the direct interest of the rich nations to provide support to the crumbling health and veterinary services of relatively poor states, and to desist from their advocacy of budgetary austerity that eviscerates whatever part of the health service as survives the ravages of HIV/AIDS and other endemic disorders.
Failing this, the global losses of human life incurred are likely to be of an order far higher than those inflicted by international terrorism. Weak and failing states harbour many more potential and plausible threats to humankind than the putative sanctuary they offer violent international criminals.
Richard Cornwell and Martin Rupiya
