HEALTH-SOUTH-EAST ASIA: Winter Could See Bird Flu Resurgence

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 27 2004 (IPS) - Animal health experts are urging governments to prepare for another outbreak of bird flu due to the approaching winter in the northern hemisphere and the arrival of migratory birds, here, escaping the freezing temperatures of Siberia.

Increasing awareness among rural communities about the lethal poultry disease in the weeks leading up to the winter will be pivotal to avoid the devastation wrought by avian influenza this year, they add.

”Governments must increase surveillance and be more organised because we may see an increase in bird flu cases in the next few months,” Carolyn Benigno, animal health officer at the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Asia-Pacific office, told IPS.

Already, governments in Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam have demonstrated a series of measures to make the region’s poultry less vulnerable to the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which has become endemic in parts of South-east Asia.

In Cambodia and Vietnam, for instance, the government is using radio and videos distributed to local communities to educate farmers about the symptoms of the poultry disease and the manner in which it could spread.

Thailand has begun strengthening the bio-security – where the poultry are kept in confined environments and not exposed to contact with wild birds – in its many duck farms.

Traditional open-air duck farms are a cause of concern and a government appointed committee to combat bird flu, led by Deputy Prime Minister Chaturon Chaiseng, is trying to coax farmers to stop this form of free-range farming.

Chaturon wants the farmers to shift to the closed-system farming of ducks, consequently assuring that they will not be exposed to migratory birds infected with avian flu.

Targeting ducks is with reason, since researches at a Thai university have concluded that ducks were more resilient than chickens to bird flu and could carry the virus for longer periods before succumbing to the disease.

In addition, Thailand plans hosting a ministerial-level meeting in late November for South-east Asian governments to galvanise regional support to combat bird flu. It will follow an agreement made this month by the 10 South-east Asian countries to create a task force to jointly limit the spread of the lethal poultry disease in the region.

Thailand was given a harsh reminder this month of how potent the avian flu virus is when 83 sturdy Bengal tigers died or were killed due to a bird flu outbreak in the private zoo that had them in Chon Buri, a town east of Bangkok.

The animals succumbed to the virus after being fed raw chicken meat that was contaminated with strains of the H5N1 virus.

The concern over the virus striking again during the coming northern hemisphere winter stems from the slight drop in temperature in tropical South-east Asia. This according to experts is conducive for the virus to survive.

Also, chickens in large coops huddle together to stay warm from the cold air that sweeps through the region, from China, during winter. That makes the poultry more vulnerable to catching the virus.

The preparations underway this year to thwart bird flu is in marked contrast to what prevailed a year ago. ”There was little effort last year to prevent a bird flu outbreak during winter,” said Benigno of the U.N. food agency.

Thailand was reported to have been hit by the first cases of bird flu in October last year, yet it was only in this January that the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra acknowledged that the lethal poultry disease was sweeping through the country’s chicken farms.

Within a month after the Thai government’s acknowledgement, migratory birds that normally escape the winter in places like Siberia for the warmth of South-east Asia were identified as possible carriers of bird flu.

But that theory, however, is yet to be proved, says Benigno. ”The link between migratory birds as carriers of bird flu has still not been confirmed. It still remains at the level of suspicion.”

Yet Thai animal health experts are warning the government against complacency over migratory birds. ”Livestock officials had sufficient information on the birds’ migratory routes and sanctuaries and they should get on with monitoring of wild birds without delay,” Panthep Ratanakorn, a veterinarian at Bangkok’s Mahidol University, was quoted as having told ‘The Nation’ newspaper on Sunday.

Thirty-two people have died due to bird flu this year in Vietnam and Thailand, the most recent being a 14-year-old Thai girl who died of pneumonia on Oct. 19.

Public health officials fear the H5N1 strain of avian flu could evolve into a strain that is able to pass from human-to-human – a situation that could trigger a pandemic more deadly than HIV/AIDS mainly because humans do not have immunity against such a potentially deadly virus.

The second outbreak of bird flu began spreading across the region since July, killing chickens in Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. The only country beyond these South-east Asian nations hit by this outbreak of avian flu is China.

However the mid-year outbreak, which has not abated, was less potent in its magnitude than the first spell of the disease, which affected eight East Asian countries, including Thailand and Vietnam.

An estimated 100 million chickens were killed or died due to the disease during the first outbreak.

For Thailand, the fourth largest poultry exporter in the world, the bird flu outbreak has led to huge losses for the poultry industry, estimated at close to 880 million U.S. dollars, according to ‘The PoultrySite.com,’ a website that monitors the global poultry industry.