Bird Flu Update #9

A deadly strain of bird flu may have emerged in eight of Nigeria’s 36 states, authorities said yesterday, amid concerns the virus had been spreading long before officials knew it was in Africa.

Also yesterday, authorities began screening workers from a northern Nigerian farm where Africa’s first documented cases of the H5N1 strain were confirmed last week – after thousands of birds had died. But authorities lacked testing equipment and workers appeared reluctant to come forward.

Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo and another top health official told reporters the five new states with suspected H5N1 were: Abuja, where the capital is located; Katsina, Nasarawa, Yobe and Jigawa.

If the cases are confirmed, they would bring the number of states affected to eight. It has been confirmed in three northern states – Kaduna, Kano and Plateau.

Katsina state Information Commissioner Abdu Haro Mashi said a Nigerian veterinary institute was testing six dead chickens from a breeding farm in the city of Katsina. The results could be available by the end of the week, Mashi said.

After the six birds died, the rest of the 3,000 fowl there were destroyed, he said.

Barry Schoub, executive director of South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases, said the virus probably has spread over a much more extensive area in Nigeria and that he expected to see large-scale destruction of birds there.

“The Nigeria case is very, very concerning because the spread in poultry appears to have been going on for quite some time and may well be more extensive,” Schoub told reporters in Johannesburg, South Africa.

“So you would have an established, infected poultry population to which the human population is exposed and that population gets quite extensive exposure to poultry.”

He said destroying birds was the most effective way to stop the spread of the infection in developing countries that did not have facilities such as those in Europe, where poultry is being kept indoors to avoid contact with water infected by migrating wild birds.

Health officials fear H5N1 could evolve into a virus that can be transmitted easily between people and become a pandemic. Most human cases of the disease so far have been linked to contact with infected birds.

H5N1 has killed at least 88 people, mostly in Asia, since 2003, but no human cases have been confirmed in Africa so far.

On Sunday, samples taken from a Nigerian family with two sick children suspected of contracting bird flu were sent abroad for testing, said Abdulsalam Nasidi, a federal Health Ministry official who visited them Sunday.

Nasidi gave no details on the family’s size and declined to say where the tests were sent. He said the children ”are in fairly good condition ... but we are still observing them.”

Monday, doctors examined 20 workers at a health clinic in the northern ton of Jaji, near the farm where H5N1 in Africa was first confirmed.

But they lacked proper testing materials, which they said a World Health Organisation team would bring by today, and about 140 other workers from the farm in the town of Jaji could not be located for testing.

Julius Gajere, leading the team checking the workers in Jaji, could not immediately say whether any of the farm workers were showing bird flu symptoms. He said he had not found any clear signs of bird flu in the handful of workers he had personally examined.

Scores of workers failed to present themselves for tests. After years of repressive and corrupt military rule, many Nigerians shy away from any contact with officialdom.

Ibrahim Hassan, who worked at Sambawa Farms before it was quarantined last week, said his co-workers were worried about being taken away somewhere by the health officials if they tested positive for bird flu.

“Many people are afraid to come” he said.

Gajere asked workers assembled for tests to persuade their colleagues to come for testing today.

“It is in their own interest and ... they are not in any kind of danger for coming for the screening,” he said.

Experts from the US-based Centres for Disease Control and Prevention arrived in Nigeria on Sunday with equipment and protective clothing for 200 Nigerian health officials who will kill birds in the north of the country, Agriculture Minister Adamu Bello said.

They were joined by other officials from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, said the FAO chief for Nigeria, Helder Muteia.

Nigerian officials have tried to contain the disease by burning chickens and other birds suspected of being infected across the north.

But poultry markets continue to operate and birds are being shipped around the country despite international recommendations to stop those practices.

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IRELAND ON-LINE

Bird Flu Update #8

Frightened poultry workers on Monday shunned medical examinations for bird flu in northern Nigeria, where the presence of the deadly H5N1 virus which can affect humans was reported last week.Only about 20 of the estimated 160 employees of Sambawa Farms in Jaji, Kaduna State, turned up for a medical screening conducted at a nearby clinic by a joint team of federal and state health officials.

Workers told IRIN that many of their colleagues stayed away because they were frightened of being detained by authorities if tested positive.But with no bird flu testing kits yet available in Kaduna, health officials were only able to check for flu symptoms and respiratory infections."We don't have the requisite kits to take the blood samples," explained Julius Gajere, one of the doctors that conducted the checks.

"We are going to identify those with any of the indicative symptoms and these would undergo blood screening when kits from the World Health Organisation (WHO) arrive by tomorrow (Tuesday)," he added.

Veterinary officials at the weekend culled 160 ostriches at Sambawa Farms, the only birds that were still surviving at the farm after some 45,000 chickens kept there succumbed to bird flu over the past month. Police snipers hit a snag on Friday when they ran out of bullets, but by Saturday the dead ostriches were burned and buried in pits and the farm disinfected.

Abdulhamid Bala Abubakar, head of a public health task force set up by Kaduna State to tackle the avian flu outbreak, said all birds within a three-kilometre radius of the farm would be culled and people who have been in contact with infected birds will be medically examined.However, residents of Birnin Yaro, the community located closest to Sambawa Farms, said health officials had not visited them, either to cull their dying poultry or check on their health.

"Our chickens have been dying in large numbers for the past one month, and right now only very few are left," said resident Musa Abdullahi. "Last week we heard the problem was from Sambawa (Farms) but so far no officials have come to see how things are in our village."Chickens wander freely about the thatched-roof mud-hut homes of Birnin Yaro village, where they mix with goats, sheep and children and are only rounded up into pens at night.Health officials are currently running tests on one family from the area whose children were displaying flu symptoms. Residents of Birnin Yaro told IRIN that no one had fallen ill in their village.

Meanwhile, poultry markets have remained open in Kano, Kaduna and Plateau - the three states of northern Nigeria where the presence of the deadly H5N1 virus have been confirmed - despite recommendations by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) that they be shut immediately as a control measure.

In poultry markets in Kaduna city traders brought birds for sale on Monday from farms in surrounding rural areas but complained that demand had gone slack over bird flu."In normal times I usually sell at least 10 chickens everyday but today I've only sold one, and even that at one-third of the usual price," said trader, Ahmed Magaji.