Although South Africa was the biggest importer of poultry in Africa, it was also the country best prepared against avian flu, a Southern African Development Community (SADC) workshop on the epidemic heard in Pretoria on Thursday.
”South Africa is in a very good place. You are used to fighting bird flu from the outbreak in the Cape district,” said Modibo Traore, director of the African Union (AU) Inter African bureau for animal resources, and chairman of the workshop.
Traore was referring to the outbreak of H5N2 virus in the Eastern Cape in 2004.
The workshop was attended by representatives of the AU, the SADC secretariat, representatives of the World Health Organisation and technical committees from member countries.
They discussed SADC preparations to face the possible outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu, better known as bird flu.
The committees from the region presented risk assessments, state-of-preparedness reports, and recommendations from their countries.
Traore said the focus on tighter restrictions on poultry, as opposed to wild birds, was in part due to Africa’s largely rural chicken-farming industry, and that cases of bird flu detected in Nigeria, Niger and Egypt were believed to be from poultry.
”What happened in West Africa was probably linked to domestic birds, although there is no definitive proof,” said Traore.
He said there was, however, much to learn about the patterns of migratory birds within Africa.
”We know their routes from Europe to Asia, from Europe and Asia to Africa, but we do not know their intra-African migratory routes.”
An audit of every SADC member state showed each country had prepared a risk plan and put together task teams to investigate the virus, said Margaret Nyirenda, director in the SADC secretariat’s food, agriculture and national-resources directorate.
The task teams had also prepared budgets which they put to their cabinets, she said.
Regional ministers of health and livestock had been directed by the secretariat to meet in Durban in April to implement the recommendations of the workshop.
These include large-scale culling of poultry in affected areas, restriction on poultry trade, tighter border controls and assistance to less-prepared countries from those better placed to face the epidemic, said Nyirenda. — Sapa