FLIGHT H5N1: NEXT STOPOVER EASTERN AFRICA?

Mugira Fredrick

The flight started in Southeast Asia in 2003. It has since then had several stopovers.

From Asia to Europe and more recently in Africa’s Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Egypt. Aboard the flight piloted by birds is none other than the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu.
Its next stopover? No one knows. Most likely Eastern Africa.

Bird flu, also known as Avian influenza, is a type of influenza virus that affects mostly birds and irregularly pigs.
"The virus can pass from bird to bird when it is inhaled and from contact with infected droppings. Like birds, human beings acquire bird flu through inhaling the virus,” says Mwebesa Tom, a lecturer in the Public Health Institute at Makerere University,

"The virus, having been inhaled, it eats cells in the body and instead of the cells producing other normal cells, it produces the virus,” says Mwebesa.
Wildlife scientists have cautioned that Eastern Africa countries are directly threatened by bird flu. They say since the region, was a major route for millions of migrant wild birds from Eurasia every year, the virus can have an easy access into it.
The farmers in the region will soon have it rough if their governments do not handle the threat of bird flu pandemic with great care.

Little has been done in this region, where poultry and humans tend to live in close proximity, to sensitize farmers and other masses about the pandemic.
At least the 10 interviewed people who keep domestic birds in Mbarara stressed that they had not been educated about Bird flu.

“We only hear bird flu on radio,” said John Tiwangye one of them while peaking in Kinyankole.
With over 190 human cases of bird flu detected worldwide and a bout 110 deaths as a result , if nothing is done to sanitize farmers in Eastern Africa , the number of deaths could shoot up greatly.
“It is important that these local people are told about the symptoms of the disease so that they can keep on guard," says Jeconeous Musingwire,the Southwestern Focal Person for the Agency that oversees environment in Uganda- NEMA.

The US based Center for Disease control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have identified a major symptom of bird flu in birds as sudden deaths in big numbers. In human beings, the two organizations say some of the symptoms include severe illness characterized by fever, sore throat, cough, pneumonia and rapid death.

Like Kenya, Ugandan government has just acquired a machine to diagnose and detect bird flu. However with out public awareness about the disease, such machines are not enough.
Kenya’s Medical Service Director, James Nyikal and Uganda’s Health Commissioner for communicable diseases, Dr Sam Okware have on several occasions insisted that their countries are prepared to deal with this pandemic. However, farmers in these regions are far from being prepared. They are ignorant about the virus.

The farmers’ ignorance was displayed recently in Kiruhura district in Uganda when local people there woke up one morning last month to find dozens of cattle eaglets dead in their area. Their carcasses lay in a stream and bushes nearby. It took about a week for local people to report this to authorities.
“If bird flu had been the cause of deaths of these birds, several people there would have acquired it because most of them had already got in contact with the carcasses,” Musingwire says.

Farming and health experts from some African countries , donor organizations and top UN officials last month met in Gabon to lay strategies on how to respond to bird flu. However not much that was discussed in this meeting has been released to benefit the local people.
“We must do everything to contain the virus and stop it turning into a pandemic over the next few months,” the UNDP’s representative in Gabon, Bintou Djibou, told a news conference before the meeting.

UN health officials have warned that if bird flu turns into a pandemic, it could kill between 5 to 150 million people worldwide. Farmers in Eastern Africa are already nervous about this.
But what should the average, nervous Eastern Africa farmer, worried bout bird flu do?
World Health Organization says people should not touch birds that have died under unknown circumstances and should not eat uncooked or undercooked poultry or poultry products.
WHO also warns people against sharing houses with poultry and also eating any bird that has died under suspicious circumstances.

In case of any out break, WHO says there is need to quarantine the suspected birds with in a radius of 30 kilometers, stamp out all domestic birds in a radius of 5 kilometers from the infected farm or homestead and disinfection of the affected farms or homesteads.
With the pilot (birds) flying the plane in any directions, no one is safe. The stopover is there today, tomorrow it may be here. This calls on the governments in the Eastern Africa region, civil organization, politicians and local people to come together and see bird flu as a great danger that may cause catastrophe in the region if nothing is done now to prevent it.

ENDS