The deadly bird flu virus may be winging its way to Africa with possibly devastating consequences to the continent, which depends on chicken as a staple source of protein, experts said on Wednesday.
They said Africa would be unprepared to deal with any outbreak of the H5N1 strain that has killed 60 people and caused the death and destruction of millions of birds in Asia since it first appeared in 1997 and has now arrived in Europe.
The main risk is seen along East Africa’s Rift Valley, where impoverished rural populations are already struggling under the twin disease burdens of AIDS and malaria.
Birds migrating from Asia to the northern hemisphere for winter stop over in freshwater ponds, dams and lakes, possible conduits for the virus, along the Valley — a vast geographical and geological feature that runs north to south for 3,100 miles from northern Syria to central Mozambique.
Praying they can avert disaster
Poultry breeders in East Africa said they would face ruin if an outbreak occurred.
“We have been discussing that issue almost every night. We pray it doesn’t come here,” said Aka Sekalala, managing director of Ugachick, Uganda’s biggest poultry breeder.
“At least in Europe they can pay people something for the birds if they have to be destroyed, but here we would just collapse,” he told Reuters in Uganda. “It would be terrible.”
Chicken is a staple source of protein across rural Africa and concerns would center on bodies of water that domestic poultry shared with migrating water fowl.
Fecal-to-oral transmission is the most common mode of spread between birds, according to the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The stopover points through the Rift Valley are usually water bodies where they can defecate and leave the virus behind,” said Dirk Verwoerd, the chairman of the Poultry Veterinary Group of the South African Veterinary Association.
Lack of preparedness causes grave concerns
East Africa is more vulnerable to bird flu than Europe and its lack of preparedness causes grave concern, a U.N. food agency expert said on Monday.
Joseph Domenech, veterinary chief at the Food and Agriculture Organization, said the wild bird migratory patterns that had brought the virus to Turkey and Romania ended in East Africa, making it likely the disease would arrive there.
“There are three big migration routes through Africa. There is a west African one that hugs the coastline and involves birds from western and northern Europe,” said Doug Harebottle of the Avian Demography Unit at the University of Cape Town.
Harebottle said the other routes took birds from central Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia down through the Rift Valley, while birds from further east in Asia flew along Africa’s Indian Ocean coast.
Officials from the region plan to meet in Rwanda later this month to work out a strategy.
Alfred Owino, an ornithology researcher at the National Museums of Kenya, told Reuters his institution would start a survey to monitor the birds migrating into Kenya.
Kenya, east Africa’s biggest economy said on Tuesday it would ban poultry imports from countries where avian flu had been reported.
The Comoros government followed suit on Wednesday and said it would tighten customs controls at the main ports connecting the tiny, impoverished Indian Ocean islands to world markets.
Migratory birds major concern
But government officials said their main concern was the thousands of migratory birds that land in the small archipelago from all over Africa.
“The migrations of birds from the north towards the south, such as those from East Africa, is our major preoccupation,” said Environment Ministry official Hachim Abdremane.
Southern Africa may be less vulnerable to an outbreak as many of the migratory species spend their time in coastal waters, minimizing the risk of contagion to domestic poultry inland.
Many of South Africa’s large poultry producers also have indoor operations, greatly reducing the risks of transmission from wild populations.
Still, South Africa is bracing itself.
Its health department said last week it was fast-tracking registration of the antiviral flu drug Tamiflu.
