Containing bird flu in Nigeria

Recently, the Food and Agriculture Organisation(FAO),called for a $20 million intervention fund for prevention and response activities  against the highly virulent avian flu H5N1. This call is in response to outbreaks of the virus in poultry farms, markets and family holdings in Nigeria and some West African countries.  The outbreak comes as some countries across the sub region are still recovering from the dreaded Ebola scourge. Moreover, fears are being expressed that left unchecked, the avian flu could trigger mass die-off of chicken with detrimental impacts on diets and the region’s economy. Before now, previous strains of the virus capable of causing illness and fatalities in humans had been spreading in some Asian countries and Egypt for nearly 10 years.
It will be recalled that, the H5NI strain is responsible for culling of millions of chickens, resulting in huge revenue losses to poultry farmers and governments worldwide.  This is not the first time the virus will be occurring in Nigeria. An earlier incursion was in 2006 but was eliminated in 2008. In late 2014, it resurfaced in Kano, Lagos, Ogun, Rivers, Delta, Edo, Plateau, Gombe, Imo, Oyo and Jigawa states, killing hundreds of thousands of poultry birds. Due to its contagious nature, especially transmission to humans, the FAO, in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and African Union (AU) have been putting plans in place, while offering technical assistance to those countries at risk with a view to containing the spread of the virus. It is therefore the responsibility of Nigeria’s authorities to avail themselves of such plans in order to safeguard public health.
This is against the background that since 2000, the World Health Organisation has singled out Nigeria and Indonesia as a great threat because of the reckless poultry management that subsists in the two countries, which could easily lay the world bare to the dreaded avian influenza pandemic that wreaked untold havoc to humanity in 1918. Bird flu is essentially a poultry disease, but when it leaves its natural host and infects humans, it could mutate into a form that could trigger the dreaded human-to-human infections with deleterious consequences.  Therefore, urgent action is needed to strengthen veterinary investigation and reporting systems in the country before there is a spillover to humans. In doing this, efforts must be intensified to sensitise ordinary Nigerians, especially those in rural areas on the danger which avian flu poses to their health and communities.
It is fact that the informal sectors of the economy far outnumber the formal thereby making them difficult to monitor.  For instance, in the villages, most families share the same houses with their chickens. As these birds are let out each day to forage for food, they are able to return to their owners because of their successful domestication. There is also a possibility that in the course of wandering for food, they may come in contacts with wild birds which are known to be the most vulnerable hosts of the dreaded virus. More frightening is that sick or affected chickens are usually slaughtered for food, even when the owners are ignorant of cause(s) of illness.  It is therefore advisable that veterinary officers employ the “trace-forward” and “trace backward’ techniques. The former looks for where infected animals have been sold or moved to, while the latter  places emphasis on examining  where infected animals were  purchased
or where they came from with the aim  of halting continuous virus or further spread. Ultimately, the authorities should emphasise enhanced hygiene routines, good poultry production and transportation practices of healthy animals. This way, the spread of the H5NI would be contained.