African nations in increasing numbers are slapping bans on poultry imports and stepping up monitoring of wild fowl amid growing fears of outbreaks of a deadly strain of bird flu on the continent, officials said on Tuesday.
In the past week, about a dozen countries in Africa where experts believe the disease is likely to spread with the arrival of migratory birds from Europe and Asia have imposed full or partial bans on imports of poultry and poultry products.
Angola and Gambia became the latest states to do so on Monday, following quickly on the heels of the Indian Ocean island nations of Mauritius and the Comoros, which adopted the measures at the end of last week.
South Africa, Senegal and Egypt along with most of East Africa — Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, which are considered particularly at risk because of the large number of migratory birds that winter in the Rift Valley — already had bans in place.
”We are not an island that is not reachable,” Nsachris Mwamaja, a spokesperson for the Tanzanian health ministry, said last week.
The restrictions take different forms — some cover all imports from all countries, some cover imports only from countries where bird-flu outbreaks have been confirmed and some cover the imports of both poultry and wild fowl — but all come with heightened surveillance of bird populations.
South Africa, the world’s largest producer of ostrich meat, has given farmers strict biosecurity guidelines to stop possible contamination from migrating birds carrying the virus that has killed more than 60 people in Asia.
In some places, like Mauritius where migratory birds have already started to arrive, veterinary authorities have already begun tests on droppings and blood to determine if the deadly H5N1 flu strain is present.
Similar measures are in place in Egypt, which has called off the bird-hunting season this year and next, slaughtered thousands of imported French ducklings at the weekend and begun testing domestic and migratory birds for the flu strain along its northern Mediterranean coast.
None of Egypt, Morocco, Mauritius and Senegal, which has also reported early arrivals in the annual bird migration, has yet detected the virus, but experts fear it may be only a matter of time.
”Some birds have begun arriving … from Europe. We have been observing them for one week and so far we have not noted anything,” said Ibrahima Diop, an official at Senegal’s Djoudj park, where millions of migratory birds flock every year.
The disease has also not been detected yet in East Africa, where Rwanda is to host an international conference on the matter next week and where the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) is most concerned about outbreaks.
”If the virus were to become endemic in eastern Africa, it could increase the risk of the virus to evolve through mutation or reassortment into a strain that could be transmitted to and between humans,” it said last week.
The FAO has said it will assist African countries to strengthen surveillance of wild and domestic birds and improve laboratory capacities in order to detect any bird-flu outbreak early, but appealed for greater international assistance.
On Monday, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said poorer nations, like those in Africa, must be helped to ward off a possible pandemic.
”No government, nor head of state can afford to be caught off guard,” WHO chief Lee Jong-Wook told a conference in the Canadian capital. ”The expected political, economic and social cost of a pandemic will be huge.”
Although the flu does not spread easily between people, those who come in contact with sick birds can contract it and scientists say millions of people worldwide could die if the H5N1 strain mutates into a disease communicable among humans. — Sapa-AFP