A rchive Date
[ 08-02-2006 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Nigeria ]
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[http://chealth.canoe.ca/channel_health_news_details.asp?channel_id=131&relation_id=1883&news_channel_id=131&news_id=16976
First African bird flu case reported
Provided by: Associated Press
Written by: HELEN BRANSWELL
February 8, 2006
(CP) - It appears the worrisome H5N1 avian flu virus that has been plaguing parts of Asia has found its way to Africa's most densely populated country, Nigeria.
A highly pathogenic strain of H5N1, which initial testing suggests is closely matched to the virus from Asia, has been found in poultry flocks in a large farm in northern Nigeria - the first reported case of the disease in Africa, the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health, or OIE, said Wednesday.
The OIE reported 40,000 of 46,000 poultry in a commercial, battery-cage operation in Jaji, a village in the northern Kaduna state, had succumbed to the virus. Nigerian authorities disinfected the farm and introduced quarantine measures and controls on the movement of animals.
Experts have long worried about the virus seeding outbreaks in Africa, with its weak veterinary and public health infrastructures and limited animal and human disease surveillance. Nigeria, which has one of the continent's largest industrial poultry sectors, presents unique challenges for those who hope to contain the outbreak before it spreads and becomes endemic.
"It's going to be very difficult to mount an eradication campaign," Dr. Alex Thiermann, president of the OIE's international animal health code, said from Paris.
While experts have assumed it was only a matter of time before H5N1 made its way to Africa, they have dreaded this development.
Dr. Joseph Domenech of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization answered "Nigeria" when asked which African country he had least wanted to see this virus pop up in.
"Oh, yes," Domenech, head of the FAO's animal health service, said from Rome.
"In Nigeria you have a lot of commercial farms. . . . (And) Nigeria as a whole is a heavily populated country in Africa."
Domenech said veterinarians and epidemiologists from the FAO and the OIE would travel to Nigeria on Thursday to begin investigating the scope of the outbreak and to help Nigerian authorities contain it. He said the World Health Organization would be asked to supply expertise as well.
Initial analysis of a signature portion of the hemagglutinin or H protein on the surface of sample viruses suggests this H5N1 is probably the virus that has caused widespread poultry deaths - and a growing number of cases of human disease - in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, China, Turkey and Iraq since late 2003. To date at least 165 human cases have been confirmed and 88 of those have died.
"With what we have today, it is a highly pathogenic H5N1 - the same, or very closely related to the previous ones," Thiermann said, adding a full genetic analysis of sample viruses is expected to be completed by late Thursday.
At present, neither organization is clear on how large the outbreak is - though both are assuming the affected farm is not the only place investigators will find infected birds. The farm is located near the Niger Delta, one of the largest over-wintering areas for wild birds in Africa, Thiermann said.
"When you have 46,000 chickens in a house, usually you have some degree of biocontainment . . . So these (chickens) are not likely to be the ones to first encounter migratory waterfowl," he said.
Debate in wildlife circles has raged over whether wild birds are moving this virus around the globe. Increasingly, experts are conceding they are playing a role, though most believe movement of infected poultry, poultry products or poultry manure is the main mode of spread.
But probably not in this case, Thiermann said. "While it's too early to blame the wildlife, it's very likely to be in an area that's remote enough that it's not likely to be associated with international trade."
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