‘Why bird flu outbreak spreads rapidly’

Nigeria is currently experiencing the outbreak of avian influenza, how did we get into this situation?Initially there was an outbreak in 2006 and that outbreak of bird flu was contained through the effort of the federal government. There were a lot of measures that the government and the stakeholders put in place and that promptly […]

Nigeria is currently experiencing the outbreak of avian influenza, how did we get into this situation?
Initially there was an outbreak in 2006 and that outbreak of bird flu was contained through the effort of the federal government. There were a lot of measures that the government and the stakeholders put in place and that promptly brought the disease under control. Between 2006 and 2008, it was contained. And we didn’t experience outbreak subsequently until sometime this year when we have the resurgence again. Presently we have about 18 states affected.
Though there has been surveillance after the last outbreak, but the structures I believe were not strong enough and then there was a lot of complacency. You know when you didn’t see it again, you become complacent and because of that, it rears its ugly head again.
Let’s talk about the nature of the virus, what does it look like?
The virus belongs to the group of viruses called RNA viruses. The viruses appear in two forms; either DNA or RNA which is an influenza virus. So it belongs to the Influenza type A group of viruses. These viruses appear in different forms but the one currently affecting the poultry is what we referred to as avian influenza. Avian influenza virus affects virtually all birds except those ones we call water fowls, birds like ducks, geese, they are little affected, not that they are not affected at all but they don’t show sign compared with chickens, turkeys, guinea fowl, all those ones are very much affected.
The virus can change form very easily; so we can see one virus joining with another one to now produce a new virus. So let’s say virus one combines with virus two to form virus three. And that virus three can be equally dangerous as one and two when it is ripe. So the virus is very elastic, it can change form anytime and if the virus enters chickens now, it can change from the form that it entered chickens to another form. So that is one thing that makes it very difficult to control and makes it a bit of epidemiological importance.
The bird flu started with seven states, it jumped to 11 states; now it has affected 18 states. What do you think is responsible for this high rate of spread?
If there is an outbreak like that, what should be advised is restriction of movement from affected areas to unaffected areas. Then there should be no illegal trade in poultry and poultry products, like carrying chickens from Zaria to Lagos. Immediately you have an outbreak, you put in place very stringent measures like restriction of movement, then quarantine and cordoning off the affected farms. You know in Nigeria, we are not vaccinating now, what we do is that affected farms are combed and depopulated, disinfect the areas, leave the areas to fallow for some time before you put new birds there. So this one spread because of unrestricted movement – both vehicular and human movement – and you know in Nigeria there is no control about movement of poultry and poultry products.
What is your assessment of practices by Nigerian poultry farmers, how safe are they?
They have not been well educated. The Poultry Association of Nigeria and the federal government, though they are trying their best, there has been a lot of public enlightenment, but they are still not well educated because they cannot handle emergency like this one we are talking about. Government needs to do a lot in that area.
Then another problem is that our local chicken, the village chicken is a major threat because people believe that they serve as chaperons, like ferries by bringing the infection from the wild birds to those poultry. So they play a very significant role. While we are controlling the disease in commercial poultry, we should start to think of how we are going to control the disease among the village chickens, the local chickens because they are a threat to those commercial poultries.
Another thing is lack of restriction in poultry marketing for instance, you can just carry your chickens from anywhere and go to the poultry market and put it there. Most infections we know are acquired from the market.