India's past no measure of the future

Bird flu danger

Business Standard / New Delhi August 23, 2006

The government may have pronounced India to be free from the bird flu virus but the threat of its reappearance is far from over. The declaration is indeed based on the fact that no fresh case of the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), caused by the deadly H5N1 virus, has been detected anywhere in the country since the effective control and containment of the last outbreak in February-March in the Navapur-Jalgaon region of Maharashtra. However, past record cannot be deemed as a guarantee for the non-emergence of the dreaded disease in future. This is especially so because this virus still exists in India’s neighbourhood and the role of the migratory birds in their transport to other areas has, by now, been well-established. What is more, even the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has issued a fresh warning about the menace, pointing out that the new strains of the virus have also been detected at some places. The heightening of the risk is borne out also by unabated outbursts of the dreaded affliction in China and its recurrence in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. Local poultry experts, too, fear that the fresh influx of migratory birds in the ensuing winter may pose a real danger of resurgence of the infection in India.

What needs to be realised is that, unlike the earlier bird flu epidemic of 2003, which was confined to the East Asia-Australia flyway of the migratory birds, the present concentration of the pathogen is in countries that lie on the East Africa-West Asia flyway, which passes through India as well. The lurking menace needs to be viewed all the more seriously since the birds’ flyways converge in the northern hemisphere, where they return from various destinations, and intermingle with each other, passing on the infection. Besides, since the virus has begun to mutate, as reflected in several cases of human deaths, the chances of a pandemic outbreak are increasing with time. And, should this happen in a populous country like India, its containment will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

In view of all this, it will be nothing short of a folly if the self-proclamation of a disease-free status lulls the government to inaction on this front. Timely preventive and precautionary measures are a must to ward off the hazard. The Poultry Federation of India has, in fact, been sounding out the government on this issue for a long time. It has suggested that poultry birds in the radius of about 20 km of all water bodies situated on the route of the migratory birds should be compulsorily vaccinated before the onset of the winter, when the fresh influx of migratory birds will begin. Of course, the poultry industry, too, needs to be vigilant and take the bio-safety measures required. But that alone will not suffice as the visiting birds get in touch with the wild birds and the back-yard poultry as well. The fear that the vaccination move may send wrong signals to importers of poultry products from India should not deter action on this front. For, exports account for less than 1 per cent of the country’s total poultry production. The gains from these exports, thus, are too meagre to justify putting the whole poultry production in jeopardy or, even more importantly, endangering human lives.