Yunus Abdulhamid
5 November 2009
Abuja — Recently, the World Bank passed what could be described as a vote of confidence on Nigeria for its ability to control and manage the dreaded Avian Influenza (H5N1) virus popularly called bird flu.
The World Bank Country Director Onno Ruhl said of the 84 countries the Bank has assisted in the containment of the disease, Nigeria remains the only country with a success story.
The dreaded bird flu was first confirmed to be in Nigeria in 2006. The last outbreak of the disease was recorded in 2008 in Kano and Katsina. They were quickly contained. Nigeria has enjoyed 14 months without an outbreak of the virus.
It is worth noting that even with this success, the game is not yet over. There is the need for the government to do more to contain the virus. Efforts put so far to minimise the impact of the disease be maintained. Sustaining the status quo are the keywords.
Speaking at a two day capacity building for media practitioners organised by the National Animal Disease Information and Surveillance (NADIS) under the federal department of Livestock in Jos, recently, Dr Sulaiman Haladu of the Nigeria Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program said studies have shown 1, 407 emerging diseases. He said 73 percent of them are zoonotic.
Zoonotic diseases or zoonoses are diseases that can be transmitted from animal to human and vice visa. This means that the increase in emerging diseases threaten not only animals but humans. Experts are saying that nipping the trend in the bud would be the best bet in combating the menace. So, the control and containment of zoonotic diseases like the influenza virus is equal in effect to promoting good health of the people. It is easier and less expensive to manage at that level experts say.
In fact, Health experts are warning of outbreak of pandemic of huge proportion in the nearest future in the world, with a worst case scenario projected at 150 million globally. Best case scenario is estimated at 40 million.
'The coming of a pandemic is no longer a question of "IF" but "WHEN,"' Dr Gashash Ahmed of the Epidemiology unit of the Live Stock Department said.
The impacts of emerging diseases are potentially dangerous. Morbidity and mortality in man and animals, loss of labour productivity due to illness, reduced travel and tourism to affected areas, death and destruction of affected animals and serious drain on a country's economy are among the flip side of a pandemic occasioned such occurrences.
In the family of influenza is the Novel Influenza virus, A (H1N1), called swine flu. The virus began in Mexico on April 21, it later moved to the United States of America but the first Africa case was recorded in Egypt on 3rd June, 2009. Kudos must be given to the Nigerian authorities especially the ministry of health and the Federal Department of Livestock in the Agric and water Resources ministry for being able to manage the situation despite the supposedly porous borders. Until November4, when the federal ministry of health announced a single case recorded in Lagos of a nine year old American girl, it has not been heard of in the country. The girl was treated and she is doing fine.
So far, about 27 countries are known to have been hit by the swine flu, with a record of 14, 109 cases and 76 deaths.
Influenza A (H1N1) is a highly contagious respiratory illness with such symptoms as fever, sneezing, coughing, headache, running nose, sore throat and sometimes diarrhoea and vomiting.
At present, experts said the main route of human to human transmission of the virus is by exposure to infected droplets expelled by sneezing or coughing that can be inhaled or that can contaminate surfaces.
Genetic and biological factors, climate and weather change, human-animal-environment interface, international travels and commerce, poverty and social inequality have been identified as responsible for emerging and re-emerging diseases.
Studies in Africa and Asia have shown the transmission of Ebola, Lassa fever, SARS, monkey pox virus, anthrax, salmonella to mention a few through the consumption of bush meat.
Records have equally shown of increasing global trade in exotic animals. For instance, the wildlife conservation society put annual global trade on exotic animal at 4 million birds, 640, 000 reptiles, 40, 000 primates while illegal trades are unknown but estimated to be worth £4-6 million.
Still speaking at the media capacity workshop, Dr Gashash Ahmed said Agriculture contributes 10% to Nigeria's GDP while livestock contributes 20% to Agric GDP.
He said out of the 4, 835 registered veterinarians, only 162 are the civil service, a figure down to low for a population like Nigeria. There are estimated 7, 500 paravets/laboratory scientists. On the other hand, animal population in the country are believed to huge.
Dr Ahmed said based on projections from the 1990 animal census, 159 million poultry presently are in the country, sheep-28 million, pigs-6.6 million, cattle-15.16 million while goats are 45.06 million.
Although, there are no statistics of wild life, but several species abound in national parks and other natural environment and studies have shown strong possibilities of the wildlife being the carriers of diseases across borders especially the migratory ones.
Already, the World Health Organisation's (WHO) phase of pandemic alert of flu is at phase six having declared the phase five. This is characterised by community outbreaks in at least one country in WHO region.
Earlier in his opening remarks, Acting Director of the federal Department of Livestock, Dr Joseph Nyager represented by Dr Gashash noted that the workshop was "an intervention to inform, partner and mobilise the media to promote in-depth and well and well informed reporting on issues relating to Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) and other Transboundary Animal Diseases (TADs)."
He said the first avian influenza outbreak in the country in 2006 "greatly challenged us to review our overall strategies in disease control and change the approaches to interventions which will help to map out the social economic/cultural epidemiology of the disease, the control measures and its impact on communities."
Mrs Olubunmi Ojo an Assistant Director in the federal ministry of Health at the workshop said the above scenario suggests a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and "the time to finalise the organisation, communication and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is now."
She however assured of government preparedness to contain any outbreak of influenza A (H1N1) with series of measures already put in place. Among them is the receipt of 184, 800 doses of vaccines from WHO, making the total in store so far 250, 000 doses. A good number of it has been distributed to states and designated federal health institutions.
Although influenza pandemic is known to be rare but was a recurrent event in the 20th century. In 1918, the 'Spanish Influenza' occurred, the 'Asian Influenza' in 1957 while the 'Hong Kong Influenza' occurred in 1968.
About 53 million people were estimated to have died worldwide in the three pandemics.
Studies have shown that when diseases re-emerge, they come with more resistant variant, and more dangerous too. For instance, in 1997, there was pandemic threat of avian flu in Hong Kong. Few hundred people were infected with the highly pathogenic A/H5N1. Six of the hospitalised died. It was different because it moved directly from chicken to people instead of being altered by infecting pigs as an intermediate host.
To stop the impending scourge, chicken, approximately 1.5 million, were slaughtered in Hong Kong. The same slaughtering took place in 2006 when bird flu broke out. Again the emergence of a novel flu virus A/H9N2 still in Hong Kong in 1999, causing illness in two children is a reason to worry and giving concern that pandemic is in the offing.
This call for caution and adequate preparation anchored by the federal government while the state governments are expected to wake up from its slumber. No serious minded nation allows its human population to be at risk, not even fauna and flora. They are two dependent entities.
Dr Ahmed in his presentation further noted that "Monitoring of abattoir rests more on the shoulders of state governments but they do not seem to be carrying out this responsibility as required. Animal health is in the concurrent list," he said. "The federal government is supposed to play a supervisory role. In some states, we have only one veterinarian and few other paravets who are supposed to oversee millions of livestock. This will not take us to the desired level."
This is appalling to say the least of the state governments. This is probably why the abattoirs in the country are in such a mess such that when foreigners visit them, they automatically turn vegetarians.
More fund need to be put into animal and human health care. These funds should be monitored with all necessary mechanism to ensure they are utilised for the purpose for which they are appropriated. Only then can we expect positive change to happen to our lives and the generation unborn.
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