ASIA: Vaccine Option Gathers Steam as Bird Flu Spreads

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Jul 29 2004 (IPS) - After being on the margins, millions of small-scale poultry farmers who inhabit the rural heartland of Asia may soon be asked to play a more decisive role to combat the outbreak of avian influenza.

This likely shift comes in the wake of more Asian countries warming up to the idea of vaccinating poultry as an effective measure to prevent outbreaks of the lethal H5N1 bird flu virus.

But Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) experts admit that the task ahead is daunting, given not only the scale of the rural poultry sector but also the demands placed to vaccinate chickens and ducks scattered across, at times, hard to reach villages.

”Vaccinating birds in remote villages will be a challenge because it will be very difficult to vaccinate all the birds,” Joseph Domenech, the U.N. food agency’s chief of animal health services, told IPS.

”To get good results, you have to cover the entire population,” he added. ”The danger is that birds that are missed and not protected will help the virus spread.”

The call for vaccinating poultry to curb the lethal H5N1 strain of avian flu gathered steam this week during a meeting held here by the U.N. food agency for animal health experts from 11 Asian countries.

Currently, three Asian countries – China, Indonesia and Pakistan – are vaccinating poultry with varied results. Indonesia, for instance, has injected an estimated 21 million birds, states the FAO.

The U.N. agency was planning to offer new guidelines to animal health experts at the meeting, which runs from Jul. 28 to 30, to broaden the inoculation of poultry across Asia.

”Vaccination is a good tool, an appropriate tool but not an easy one to implement,” said Domenech. ”It is also very costly.”

This push for vaccinating chickens comes a few months after Asian countries hit by avian flu at the beginning of this year imposed bans on poultry vaccination, including Thailand.

Major chicken exporting countries such as Thailand, the world’s fourth largest poultry exporter, were also warned of possible bans on vaccinated Thai chickens from importing countries.

So it comes as no surprise why some countries that were hit hard by the first bout of bird flu early this year, such as Vietnam, where 15 people died due to the disease, are still in two minds.

”We have discussed the vaccination option and got new information but we are still undecided about whether to vaccinate or not,” Hoang Van Nam, head of epidemiology at Hanoi’s department of animal health, told IPS.

Since the latest outbreak of bird flu in Vietnam’s southern provinces, an estimated 50,000 chicken have been culled as a preventive measure.

Hanoi’s preference towards culling was the case across Asia when the lethal strain of avian flu swept through the region at the beginning of this year.

An estimated 100 million chickens were slaughtered in the eight affected Asian countries, which included China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam, during the first outbreak.

Thailand was an epicentre of the virus during that outbreak, with two-thirds of the country’s 76 provinces struck by the disease. In addition, seven Thais died due to the disease, the only second country after Vietnam to account for fatalities.

This time around, China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam are among the Asian countries hit with the avian flu, which is transmitted through the air and is released in nasal secretions and the faeces of infected birds.

And with growing interest in vaccinating chickens, it is inevitable that the small-scale farmers will be asked to take on greater responsibility for such an inoculation drive to succeed, says Vietnam’s Nam.

That stems from poultry farmers in villages being the key to ensure a vaccination drive is a success, he adds.

But the road ahead will not be easy, given the sizeable presence of poultry farms located in rural communities.

”Close to 80 percent of the poultry farms in Asia is in the hands of small-scale farmers,” Hans-Gerhard Wagner, a senior animal production and health officer at the FAO, said in an interview.

Thailand, in fact, reflects this realty, where over two million people make up the small-scale poultry sector.

In Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, almost all chicken farms are in the hands of farmers who raise the birds in their backyards.

And as animal health experts like Wagner admit, it is among the small-scale poultry sector that bio-security measures are the weakest or absent.

Consequently, the chickens and ducks meant for consumption are not only exposed to avian flu infections from migrating birds or domesticated poultry, but also pose a difficulty when farmers are roped into an inoculation programme.

”A change of the people’s mindset is needed before implementing bio-security measures in these rural farms,” said Wagner. ”That will be very difficult.”

But whatever difficult they pose, the small-scale farms should not be eliminated, he says. ”They are a vital source of food security for the rural communities.”