Pakistan has banned import of poultry and poultry products from 13 countries as a precautionary measure. These countries are Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, China, Cambodia, North Korea, Laos, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Turkey, Greece and Romania.
NORTH KOREA
On October 24, North KoreaNorth KoreaPyongyang that began in February had been stamped out after destroying more than 200,000 chickens and vaccinating 1.1 million poultry. said in July an outbreak near announced that it was stepping up a campaign to prevent an outbreak of bird flu, using its experience in dealing with a previous outbreak.
INDONESIA
Indonesia’s approach to the threat posed by bird flu has been haphazard. Critics now say that officials covered up and then neglected a spreading bird flu epidemic for two years until it began to sicken people in the middle of this year. This may be the reason why it has registered more human cases since July than any other country. Meanwhile, the attention of the government has been diverted by the terrorist threat and the need to track down those responsible for the second round of bombings in Bali October 1.
The health care system has also deteriorated significantly since the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the weakening of central government authority following the 1998 overthrow of the Suharto regime. As a result, the country is heavily dependent upon foreign assistance to deal with the threat of a pandemic. has reported seven human cases of H5N1 bird flu. Four of these cases were fatal. Australia, Indonesia ( 40,000 doses) and Japan ( 10, 000).
Although the country has a population of 220 million, the authorities have been able to distribute just 15,000 doses of Tamiflu to designated bird flu hospitals. However, more doses are arriving from Australia (40, 000) doses and Japan( 10,000) doses. To date, Indonesia has reported seven human cases of H5N1 bird flue. Four of these cases were fatal.
The Ministry of Agriculture announced it had informed the Attorney General of the scam after discovering that the vaccines had a low protection level of between 11.8 and 28 percent. Senior ministry officials are suspected of colluding with four pharmaceutical companies to produce the unacceptably weak vaccines. Current estimates suggest that the scam involved losses of up to Rp 56.98 billion (US$5.7 million). Meanwhile, farmers across the country have been complaining that they have not received any compensation for culling infected flocks because officials have embezzled the money.
This is a serious matter for a government, whose officials only recently insisted that they were vaccinating rather than culling local poultry against bird flu because they could not afford to follow strict World Health Organisation guidelines on culling. Indonesia , the officials argued, just did not have enough money to compensate the affected farmers.
The infection appears to have been contained in large commercial farms, where it first appeared. However, it may now have spread to poultry in smaller farms and to the chickens raised in millions of back yards.
The government has also announced plans to revise laws that have been used to prevent health authorities from investigating suspected bird flu outbreaks in commercial poultry farms. When bird flu first appeared in Indonesia two years ago, the country's 11 biggest poultry producers blocked access to their farms, hampering efforts to fight the virus
INDIA
The government has formed a high-level inter-ministerial task force to watch out for possible bird flu outbreaks and draft an action plan. The task force includes secretaries of health, environment, and animal husbandry and agriculture ministries. Although India intends to buy some drugs for emergency use, it apparently has no plans to stockpile them. Gujarat, West Bengal, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and five Northeastern states.These states will hold fortnightly meetings with the federal government.The government has asked these states to take precautionary measures including increase in collection of random samples and increase surveillance in the vulnerable areas about bar-headed geese, large cormorants and black-headed gulls species, the suspected carriers of the virus.
According to High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL), there have been no reports of bird flu virus in about 17,000 serum and tissue samples collected since August 2003. However, the government has alerted the respective state governments to take random samples from the poultry situated in the vicinity of the bird sanctuaries where the migratory birds reach during the winter season.
The federal government has banned import of wild birds and poultry meat and eggs from the affected countries. An alert has been issued in the Northeastern states to restrict any smuggling from the neighbouring countries bordering the region.
The Health Ministry has already held a meeting with the officials of pharmaceutical companies Roche, Cipla, and Ranbaxy and discussed licensing and patent issues of ‘Tamiflu’. India has also followed Taiwan and Thailand’s lead in declaring that they will manufacture generic versions of ‘Tamiflu’.
CHINA
The WHO has commented that, although China appears to have the political will to tackle the problem and had stepped up monitoring efforts, more needs to be done at the local level. The Chinese government has set up a national monitoring network and emergency response plans to prevent any future epidemic from spreading. Special hospitals for contagious diseases have been built since the 2003 SARS crisis. All hospitals have also instituted alert procedures to handle infectious diseases. However, the new system has yet to be tested. A decision is likely to be made soon about whether to stockpile anti-flu drugs.
Efforts to combat bird flu were stepped up in October, with inspectors being sent to farms, households and migratory bird sanctuaries to enforce disease prevention controls. The Beijing municipal government says it is prepared to ban all slaughtering of poultry at markets as part of its initiatives to prevent a bird flu outbreak in the capital. China has suffered a series of outbreaks of bird flu recently. The latest cases occurred in a village in Hunan province. Other outbreaks have been reported in Inner Mongolia, Anhui and Hunan.
The government's report on the Hunan outbreak did not say whether authorities imposed quarantines or took other measures in addition to destroying birds. Following the Anhui outbreak, the government told the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation that it destroyed 45,000 birds living nearby and vaccinated 140,000 others. There have been no reports of human cases of bird flu.
China has proposed a conference on new pandemics next year in Beijing, focusing on the monitoring, control, prevention and treatment of bird flu and on sharing information on the subject. The government has also enhanced import and export quarantine requirements in a bid to stop the spread of the disease. Health officials have also signed an agreement with Hong Kong and Macau aimed at coordinating responses to outbreaks of infectious disease. The West Bengal government aims to slaughter 4 lakh birds in a five-to-10 kilometer (three-to-six mile) radius of the affected areas and aims to complete it by Monday, after which clean up and disinfection operations will begin.
Eleven days after the bird flu outbreak was made public, around 350,000 birds, including some of the state governor’s imported ducks, had been slaughtered and stamping out operations carried out. Around 30,000 eggs and 23,000 bags of chicken feed were also destroyed.
In Manipur nearly 1,700 state health and veterinary personnel were divided into 74 Rapid Response Teams (RRT) which mounted a surveillance programme covering 60,000 households (300,000 people) across 86 villages within a five km-radius of the focus of the outbreak, Chingmeirong village outside Imphal. Over 40,000 households have been covered by the surveillance teams till date.
Tamil Nadu has already banned poultry products from West Bengal where incidence of avian influenza had been reported. The National Egg Coordination Committee had also said that bio-security measures were put in place in Namakkal, the poultry hub in the state, which has around 800 poultry farms and over three crore chicken. Checkposts have been set up on the Chennai-Kolkata National Highways and vehicles carrying products from West Bengal were being stopped and sent back. Other vehicles from West Bengal were allowed only after cleaning with disinfectants.
Veterinary officials were making frequent visits to all poultry farms. As many as 200 Rapid Response Teams have been formed to take action in the eventuality of an outbreak and masks and other equipment have been provided to them.
Reactions-2008
UK
The government is determined to "stamp out" the Suffolk bird flu outbreak and regain the UK's "disease free" status, the environment
secretary says. The government says the priority is to contain and eradicate the outbreak at the farm in Holton.
Russia
Outbreaks of the H5N1 bird flu virus potentially deadly for humans have been confirmed in eight Russian provinces, prompting a mass cull of poultry. But while the Western world is anxiously watching the virus spread westwards and bracing for a possible pandemic, a number of Russian politicians and officials are downplaying the threat of bird flu. Some are even accusing foreign poultry exporters of whipping up paranoia in Russia to win business
SRI LANKA
Sri Lanka is curbing poultry imports and stepping up surveillance of migratory birds in a bid to avert an outbreak of avian influenza (bird flu) which has flared up in neighbouring countries. Trained veterinary teams are collecting the saliva and droppings of migratory birds; and customs officials are especially watchful of poultry imports and travellers with respiratory illnesses entering the country, according to Health Ministry officials.
“Sri Lanka has already taken several precautionary measures against avian influenza,” said Pabha Palihawardena of the Health Ministry’s Epidemiological Unit. “We now have a regular routine for surveillance. This includes sending out alerts to hospitals when avian influenza is reported in nearby countries and sending monitoring teams to sanctuaries where the migratory birds flock.” The government re-imposed a ban on the import of live chicks from India earlier this month shortly after the virus was detected in the northeastern regions of the sub-continent earlier this month. The day-old chicks are used as parent stock in commercial poultry farms which now rely on supplies from the Netherlands and France.The northeastern Indian state of West Bengal has culled thousands of chickens, mostly on small domestic farms, in recent weeks to stop the spread of the virus. However, so far, there have been no reports of the virus having been transmitted to humans in those areas.
Although there have been no cases of the disease among poultry or humans, Sri Lanka is considered at high risk because it is close to nations such as India and Bangladesh which have already had significant avian flu outbreaks. The flocks of wild waterfowl that come annually from temperate countries to the island’s tropical wetlands are considered one of the likely sources of transmission of the virus. The visiting birds are here between September and April.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has just completed a US$400,000 programme to strengthen the capacity of animal health personnel who were trained in detection and culling methods, and to upgrade testing and diagnostic facilities in government laboratories.FAO is set to implement the second phase of the avian flu prevention programme with a further US$500,000. The aim will be to educate small farmers in areas considered most vulnerable to the disease and raise awareness of managing an outbreak of the disease.
CHINA
An outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been discovered in Tibet, southwest China, the Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday, citing the agriculture ministry. The outbreak in the Gongga county on Friday left a total of 1,000 birds dead and a further 13,080 were slaughtered. "No human infection has been reported," the agency said. Local authorities have imposed quarantine restrictions in the affected areas.
The recent outbreak comes less than a month after another case in Turpan, in northwest China, killed 4,850 birds and another 29,383 were culled. Although no cases of human-to-human transmission of H5N1 have been reported, scientists fear the virus could mutate into a strain that could pass easily between people, causing a global pandemic.
BANGLADESH
Bird flu or avian influenza is spreading across Bangladesh. In the last four days, over 1,000 crows have dropped dead in Barisal, Patuakhali and Dinajpur districts, with laboratory tests confirming they were infected with the H5N1 virus.Despite government efforts to burn or buy the dead birds, in many places the carcasses of dead chickens and crows can be seen rotting in the open.
Special assistant to the country’s chief adviser Manik Lal Samaddar has declined to describe the situation as “alarming”, but he conceded at a press conference that the government was unable to address it alone: He called on poultry farmers to help tackle the problem.
Every vehicle at 11 border crossings with neighbouring India, which is now battling its own outbreak of the virus, is to be sprayed with anti-viral disinfectant. Spraying is also taking place at other key points. Security forces were closely checking for any illegal poultry and egg imports from India. A 16-member government health team was also working at district level to detect and observe the disease, Samaddar said. "They are collecting specimens as well as examining and culling infected birds or livestock. The Health Ministry is assisting the Fisheries and Livestock Ministry in the job," he explained.
Additionally, 150 volunteers had been appointed under the Directorate of Livestock to prevent the spread of the disease, while’s the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was supporting the government in its effort to bring the disease under control.
Moreover, a bird flu ward had been set up in the National Institute of Diseases of the Chest and Hospital in Dhaka, while a laboratory had been established to diagnose infected persons.
"The government is well prepared to face any situation,” Alamgir said.“Rapid Response Teams (RRT), with 11 trained members in each team, have been put in place in all 64 districts. Five trained RRT members in each of 471 sub-districts have been provided with personal protective equipment. Enough antiviral drugs have been stored at district hospitals for the use of those who cull sick birds,” he said.
More than 225,000 volunteers had been trained at more than 4,400 unions (elected local government unit at community level) across Bangladesh.
Since March 2007 when the first bird flu case was reported, more than 360,000 chickens have been culled at 93 poultry farms in 48 sub-districts of 29 districts and six metropolitan cities across the country. From August 2007, the government of Bangladesh has been implementing a project - with financial assistance of US$22.3 million from the World Bank - for training livestock officials on bird flu surveillance.
The poultry industry employs over five million people in Bangladesh; with commercial farms producing 220 million chickens and 37 million ducks annually. However, this is just 30 percent of the total national poultry production, with the rest produced in backyard farms.
People should be made aware of waste management, particularly poultry waste, which needs to be buried in deep soil instead of being thrown into open dustbins, Habibur Rahman said.
According to the World Health Organization, since 2003 bird flu has killed over 200 people in 12 countries, most of them in Asia.
THAILAND
A new outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been detected in northern Thailand, the Xinhua news agency said on Thursday, citing local livestock officials. The source of the deadly virus, which has so far killed 219 people worldwide, was detected at a poultry farm near the city of Nakhon Sawan, about 240 km (150 miles) north of the capital, Bangkok. Over 4,000 chickens have died and over 10,000 have been culled so far at the farm since the start of the year.
Thailand is the 11th country to register bird flu cases this month, along with Dominica, Israel, Benin, Vietnam, China, Myanmar, Portugal, India, Bangladesh, and the U.K. The last outbreak of bird flu in Thailand was reported in March 2007 in the southwest of the country, near the border with Laos. According to the World Health Organization, of the 25 cases of bird flu registered in the country so far, 17 have been lethal. Although no cases of human-to-human transmission of H5N1 have been reported, scientists fear the virus could mutate into a strain that could pass easily between people, causing a global pandemic.
EGYPT
Egypt’s Supreme Committee to Combat Bird Flu - a government body - said on 19 January that infection rates among poultry in farms and homes had dropped sharply since the second week of January. It said this was largely due to a public awareness campaign and the intensification of vaccination initiatives.
However, Amany Nakhla, regional planning assistant for avian flu in the Cairo office of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), warned against a slackening in the awareness phase. She said 15 new suspected human cases of bird flu from the Delta area had been under medical surveillance since 16 January.
According to current government measures all farms proven infected with the bird flu virus are shut down for a period of six months and all birds and farm wastes on the farms are destroyed. The government further prohibits moving poultry from one governorate to another or from one farm to another without permission. Farm owners who do not abide by these regulations face a penalty.
So far, according to Egypt’s State Information Services, the government has issued about 250,000 bulletins about bird flu and how one can protect oneself against it. In addition, half a million fact sheets have been distributed to students to raise awareness about the bird-flu issue, the reasons of infection and possible ways of protection.
Sources:
www.wikipedia.org
www.google.com
www.globalsecurity.org
http://www.asisonline.org/newsroom/crisisResponse/HA_SpecialReport-BirdFluContingencyPlanning1.pdf.
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