More than 330 million people across West Africa are at risk of the H5N1 bird flu virus if the virus continues to spread, according to the United Nations.
Markets and farms in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, Ivory Coast and Ghana have been hit by the deadly virus over the past six months, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said.
A highly contagious strain of avian flu is spreading across West Africa, decimating poultry farms and stoking fears the virus will jump from birds to humans, the U.N.’s food agency warned.
“Urgent action is needed to strengthen veterinary investigation and reporting systems… to tackle the disease at the root, before there is a spill over to humans,” Reuters quotes Juan Lubroth, head of the FAO’s animal health division, as saying.
In Nigeria alone, 1.6 million birds have been killed by the virus or culled to stop its spread since last year, the FAO said, damaging the economy and robbing citizens of a relatively cheap source of protein. The Permanent Secretary in Nigeria’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Architect Sonny Echono, says the ministry has put in place adequate mechanisms to contain the spread, adding that over N300 million had been released to poultry farmers that are yet to be compensated, to mitigate losses incurred during the recent outbreak of the disease.
H5N1 bird flu first infected humans in 1997 in Hong Kong. It has since spread from Asia to Europe and Africa and has become entrenched in poultry in some countries, causing millions of poultry infections and several hundred human deaths.
Other West African countries including Benin, Cameroon, Mali and Togo have not identified bird flu cases and need to continue monitoring the situation to help prevent its spread, the FAO said. Local veterinary officials have been urged by the UN to try to trace where infected animals were sold to find sources of the outbreak in order to halt its spread.
Poultry production has grown rapidly across West Africa in the past decade. The Ivory Coast alone has seen output expand by more than 60 percent, but regulatory systems haven’t kept pace, the FAO said. The organization is asking donors for $20 million to respond to the avian flu outbreak and to help prevent its spread. Reuters.