Veterinary experts from across Africa warned on Thursday that an avian-flu outbreak could prove devastating to the continent because of the poor facilities and inadequate monitoring capacity in many countries.
The officials, gathered in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, for a conference on contagious animal infection, also outlined measures to deal with the deadly virus should it reach Africa.
A bird-flu epidemic would ”would prove more devastating [here] than in Asia considering the weak capacity to carry out diagnosis and surveillance as well as the close contact with domestic fowl among the rural population”, they said in a report released at the conference.
They urged African Union member states to furnish the pan-African body with details of cases of the bird-flu virus previously detected in their territories.
The report also called on countries to ”carry out targeted tests, including blood tests, to estsblish the current situation regarding the highly pathogenic avian flu”.
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 deadly H5N1 strain mutates into one communicable among humans.
Those meeting in Kigali also called for a continental conference to be held under the AU’s auspices with the participation of the United Nations’s World Health Organisation and Food and Agriculture Organisation to define ways of combating the virus.
They also said AU members should also gather information on the migratory paths of birds heading to Africa, which scientists believe could be carriers of bird flu.
Having spread from Asia, where the it has claimed about 60 human lives, to Europe, the H5N1 is feared to be on the verge of breaking out in Africa, which hosts huge numbers of migratory birds.
Such fears have prompted many African nations to issue bans on imported poultry and put health officials on alert, while the experts urged for implementation of strategies for early detection and rapid response. — Sapa-AFP