posted
A northern Nigerian farmer has told the BBC News website that farmers have been killing their sick birds and sending them to market to be sold as meat.
This our fellow country men self dem go kill us all o but Allah no go agree.
quote:February 08, 2006 Deadly bird flu found in Africa The deadly strain of bird flu has been found in poultry in northern Nigeria, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) has said in statement.
The Paris-based organisation said this was the first time the disease had been detected in Africa.
The body said it was the "highly pathogenic" strain of the H5N1 bird flu virus, which can kill humans.
It was detected on a farm in the northern state of Kaduna, where a team of experts have been sent.
Authorities there said they had taken measures to stamp out the outbreak by disinfecting the affected premises, imposing a quarantine and putting restrictions on animal movements.
It is not clear if the case on a commercial chicken farm in Jaji, near the city of Kaduna, has any relation to the deaths of thousands of chickens in neighbouring Kano state.
Officials at the Ministry of Agriculture say they are still investigating whether the poultry there died of a more common avian disease.
Emergency meeting
The BBC's Alex Last in Lagos says an outbreak of bird flu could have devastating consequences in Nigeria where millions of people rear chickens as a basic source of income.
The OIE said that an Italian laboratory for avian flu had detected the strain from samples from the infected farm which had some 46,000 birds.
"We are really not dealing with a backyard operation," OIE expert Alex Thiermann told Associated Press news agency.
Farmers in Kano are preparing to hold an emergency meeting.
The price of chickens in Kano has halved, with a bird now fetching not more than $2.
Mutation fears
Scientists believe the bird flu might have been carried by migrating birds from Asia to Europe and Africa but say it is hard to prove a direct link.
There are fears that the disease could easily spread in Africa because of a lack of safeguards.
"What is most important now is not how it got into Nigeria, but how it can be prevented from leaving Nigeria," Cape Town ornithologist Phil Hockey told Reuters.
A northern Nigerian farmer has told the BBC News website that farmers have been killing their sick birds and sending them to market to be sold as meat.
"We are still waiting for the affected farmers round here to be quarantined," said Auwalu Haruna from Kano.
More than 80 people have died of H5N1 bird flu since the disease's resurgence in December 2003 - most in Asia.
Experts point out that cross-infection to humans is still relatively rare, and usually occurs where people have been in close contact with infected birds.
But they say if the H5N1 strain mutates so it can be passed between humans some 150m people could die.
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By DANIEL BALINT-KURTI, Associated Press Writer Sun Feb 12, 4:39 PM ET
LAGOS, Nigeria - Nigeria ignored international recommendations for stopping bird flu, keeping poultry markets open on Sunday and letting people move their birds around most of the country unrestricted.
Officials were awaiting word on whether the virus already had infected people in Africa's most populous nation. Test results were pending on two sick children near a farm where the H5N1 strain was first detected among poultry. Their families also were being tested.
Tope Ajakaiye, a spokesman for Nigeria's Agriculture Ministry, said there were no plans to close poultry markets or restrict the trade or movement of poultry as recommended by international organizations.
"We don't want to cause a situation where there will be much panic or alarm," Ajakaiye said.
Indonesia said Sunday that the World Health Organization had confirmed that two women there had died from the H5N1 bird flu strain. The two deaths are expected to bring Indonesia's official human death toll from the virus to 18.
A European Union laboratory was testing samples to determine if the strain that killed a swan in Slovenia near the Austrian border was H5N1.
On Sunday, Slovenian authorities imposed strict controls in the area. Poultry there will be isolated, tested for the virus and killed if infected.
Italy and Greece put similar measures in place Saturday after the H5N1 strain was found for the first time inside the European Union.
Austria's southern border province of Carinthia on Sunday also introduced strict controls of livestock and food from Slovenia.
Meanwhile, experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arrived Saturday in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, with protective clothing for 200 Nigerian health officials who will slaughter birds, said Nigerian Agriculture Minister Adamu Bello.
Two officials from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization also arrived to help determine a plan of action with local authorities.
Bird flu has killed at least 88 people in Asia and Turkey since 2003 and ravaged poultry stocks across Asia, killing or forcing the slaughter of more than 140 million birds, according to a Feb. 9 WHO report.
Health officials fear the H5N1 strain will 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.
Sub-Saharan Africa, with about 600 million of the world's poorest people, is particularly ill-suited to deal with a health crisis. With weak and impoverished governments in regions where many people keep chickens for food, experts say mass killings to help control bird flu will be hard to carry out properly.
Health authorities worry the virus may have already spread undetected elsewhere in Africa.
The virus has been confirmed at five farms in northern Nigeria, killing at least 100,000 birds. Nigeria has about 130 million people and 140 million poultry.
Bird farms across northern Nigeria are under quarantine, said Junaidu Maina, director of Nigeria's livestock department, though he did not say how many of Nigeria's 36 states were under the order. Health officials said that on Monday they plan to screen workers on infected farms.
Neighboring Benin and Niger have banned poultry imports from Nigeria, where authorities visited northern bird farms Saturday to destroy chickens believed to be infected.
Protective clothing and hygienic practices to reduce the chance of infection were spotty or absent.
At one farm, veterinary officials slashed chickens' necks, dumped them in pits and set them on fire. Nearby, police armed with automatic weapons finished off a group of 180 ostriches after running out of bullets a day earlier.
Only one of four veterinary workers destroying birds at another farm wore protective clothing.
Those taking part in the culling were sprayed with disinfectant beforehand. Six farmworkers in Kano used their bare hands to load dead chickens into wheelbarrows and dump them a pit to be burned.
____
Associated Press writer Dulue Mbachu in Kaduna contributed to this report.
___________________ Biafra is inevitable.Illegitimis nil carborundum. Posts: 760 | From: europe | Registered: Jan 2005
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We should check to make sure that some of the deadly chicken did not come from Obasanjo's Ota Farm. I think that may be the reason that Obasanjo is reluctant to restrict the sale of bird flu chicken from Ogun State to Kano State.
Posts: 94 | From: Richmond, VA | Registered: Jun 2001
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where is Obasanjo now, he likes to distroy imported chicken by Igbo business men. Now his Ota farm conterminated, yet he is not talking and probably going to feed it to poor people in Nigeria.
quote:The H5N1 strain of bird flu can pass from birds to humans, usually people such as farmers or poultry traders in direct contact with live animals. However, if it mutates into a form transmissible between people it could cause a pandemic killing tens of millions, experts warn. Two UN bodies, the FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), have called on Nigerian authorities to immediately close poultry markets, but this has not been done--Vanguard
___________________ Biafra is inevitable.Illegitimis nil carborundum. Posts: 760 | From: europe | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:Akunyili allays fear on bird flu, eats roast chickenBy Fabian Odum, Lagos and Temitope Ariyo (Lokoja)
TO douse public fears over the consumption of chicken following the spread of the avian flu virus, the nation's chief food and drug regulatory officer, Prof. Dora Akunyili, yesterday publicly ate a mouthful of roast chicken at a campaign rally.
You can count me as an admirer of Dora Akunyili, but her action was highly IRRESPONSIBLE and UNBECOMING of a public officer. At the time other nations are calling for caution she’s out there on the orders of obasanjo and the blinded northern cabal eating chicken that must have undergone some testing or is specially made just to create her public show of shame. It’s like when george bush asked fellow Americans to go about their businesses after the arabic 9/11 attacks at the same time his entire family’s secret service protection was being reinforced, make that fortified! I don’t know why these folks find the need to mislead the naïve public into doing things that are inimical.
___________________ BIAFRA: The land of my ancestors now, yesterday and always. So it will be! Posts: 2482 | From: Ala Igbo | Registered: Apr 2004
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