An alarming new specter of disease looms over Africa. For at least a month, avian flu has been devastating poultry flocks in northern Nigeria, but it is only now that laboratory tests have confirmed this is the H5N1 virus.
A cull is under way, but World Health Organization officials are pessimistic about the chances of arresting the disease before it spreads.
Indeed, given the time taken to report the outbreak and the incubation period in birds, the alarming likelihood is that avian flu has already taken hold, not just in Nigeria but in neighboring countries.
The consequences of this virus in domestic poultry in Africa are almost certain to be far more serious than in Asia, where in some countries, such as Vietnam, the disease is believed to be endemic. In the poorest parts of Africa, the enforced slaughter of birds kept for eggs and meat will have a catastrophic impact. Rural communities, whose subsistence farming has already been disrupted by drought and poor harvests, will not readily give up the only livestock that is cheap and easy to rear and husband. Even assuming that the authorities are able to coordinate a thorough organized cull, there will be many communities tempted to hide away their poultry. The virus only needs one small reservoir to be preserved for the disease to break out again as new poultry stocks are introduced.
As yet, there are no reports of the transmission of the H5N1 virus to humans in Africa or any resulting deaths. Unfortunately, the reason such reports do not exist may have nothing to do with the absence of any such infection, but everything to do with the parlous state of most African health services.
It took long enough to persuade Africa to confront the scourge of HIV/AIDS and even longer to set in place still inadequate facilities across the continent to treat victims. Meanwhile, because the message about the dangers of HIV/AIDS failed to get through to many people, the infectious disease continued to be spread through ignorance and promiscuity.
How much more difficult therefore will it be to persuade millions of Africans to part with poultry flocks in infected regions, birds which are essential to their very existence?
The international community can and must assist here with compensation, alternative food sources and, when it’s safe, replacement poultry. There will be those who protest that opening up a pocketbook will be a recipe for corruption and theft. This is undoubtedly true. Millions of birds that never existed will be claimed. However, a compensatory system ought also to ensure that millions of possibly infected birds will in fact be destroyed. It will allow the owners to avoid starvation and survive. Does it matter that officials and dirt-poor people will exploit compensation payments? If H5N1 establishes a solid base in Africa, it could spread to humans by the hundreds of thousands and from its new reservoir in the continent then spread to the rest of the world.
