To change a tradition: hard or impossible?

07 Dec 2006 15:11:41 GMT
Source: Reuters


By Alistair Thomson

BAMAKO, Dec 7 (Reuters) - African customs such as using children to rear village poultry could expose people to deadly bird flu and must be addressed to lower the risk of human infection, delegates said at a summit this week.

Experts from around the world are meeting in Mali's capital Bamako to discuss how to fight the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus and prevent it causing a human influenza pandemic.

"In Africa, it is the children's job, supervised by the women, to look after the poultry," Neil Ford, a communications adviser for the U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF in West Africa, said in a presentation to delegates late on Wednesday.

This tradition was held in high esteem by African communities as it developed children's sense of responsibility, Ford said, but it also exposed them to diseases carried by the birds -- and potentially H5N1, which has killed 154 humans around the world since 2003.

"We have to come up with solutions that are compatible with (Africans') lives and traditions," he said.

Delegates from African countries noted many of their traditions involved live poultry.

In many countries, chickens are presented as gifts to visitors and to mark special occasions, or are slaughtered in religious ceremonies.

In Benin, the West African home of voodoo, a particularly risky form of sacrifice involves participants killing a chicken by ripping out the bird's throat with their teeth.

In open-air markets throughout Africa, birds are kept tightly packed in cages with little or no separation of species, and are slaughtered, plucked and butchered on the spot with scant regard for international hygiene or disease control standards.

UNICEF's Ford said international agencies helping fight bird flu in Africa needed to talk to communities to find ways of reducing the risk of infection, both among birds and among people tending poultry.

For example, he said, it was common in villages for those tending poultry -- often children -- to single out sick chickens, slaughter them and pluck them to be cooked, in order to minimise losses in small households with little food to spare.

Although thorough cooking kills the flu virus, such practices expose the person slaughtering and preparing the bird if it is carrying avian influenza.

Changing attitudes and practices to reduce the risk of infection will take time.

"Its not going to happen very quickly, certainly not universal behaviour change," U.N. bird flu coordinator David Nabarro said in an interview.

"Make sure that you see this as a long-term issue, not something that is going to be deal with overnight."

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Birds migrating, scientists testing.

Researchers testing for deadly bird flu at Salton Sea
No detection of deadly H5N1 virus anywhere in North America yet


Keith Matheny
The Desert Sun
December 4, 2006
The Salton Sea is one of the fronts in the biggest multi-agency bird investigation in U.S. history, seeking to determine if a deadly strain of avian flu has entered North America through migratory birds.

Federal and state officials have tested 137 waterfowl birds shot by hunters this fall at the Wister Unit of the Salton Sea's Imperial Wildlife Area, said Pam Swift, a veterinarian in the California Department of Fish and Game’s wildlife investigations laboratory. Officials plan to test 100 more birds throughout December and January, she said.

Some 60 samples of bird feces were also taken for analysis, and officials plan to collect an additional 90 samples between now and the end of January, Swift said.

Of concern is that the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu could make its way to America via the Pacific Flyway, a migratory route used by hundreds of species of birds, including many of the approximately 400 species that use the Salton Sea as a wintering site or a stopover.

Some birds that migrate along the Pacific Flyway, such as northern pintails, nest over the summer in areas in and around Alaska, where they could potentially commingle with birds that migrate along an Asian flyway between countries where the virus is spreading.

The World Health Organization has confirmed 258 cases of human infection with the H5N1 virus, leading to 154 deaths. Most of the cases are linked to direct handling of infected poultry. There has been no sustained human-to-human transmission of the disease, but the concern is that H5N1 will evolve into a virus capable of human-to-human transmission, which could spark a pandemic like the 1918-1919 influenza outbreak that caused 50 million deaths worldwide.

Of the 80,000 birds tested throughout North America, not a single one has been found infected with the deadly strain of H5N1.

“I’m heartened that we so far haven’t had a detection,” said Brad Bortner, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s chief of migratory birds for the Pacific region.

“(But) I think it’s too early to draw conclusions on whether (the virus) will get here or not. There’s still migration occurring.”