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Lanka on fowl alert
By Kumudini Hettiarachchi
The guards are up and a red alert is on in Sri Lanka against the bird flu but some people gripped by fear are simply not having chicken or egg on their plates, bringing prices crashing and making sales plummet. For weeks on end, bird flu has been sweeping rapidly across Asia, with many countries succumbing in a domino effect, leaving a trail of devastation - millions of chickens slaughtered and at least 16 humans, mostly children, dead at the time of going to press.

"We are not taking any chances," stresses Dr. S.K.R. Amarasekera, Director-General of the Department of Animal Production and Health. "An emergency preparedness plan is in place in Sri Lanka to prevent the disease coming in. Permits are needed to import any livestock and livestock products to the country and I am not issuing them for chicken and other avian meats from any Asian country. I am very vigilant."

Imports of pet birds from all over the world and egg powder and prawn meal which may even have the slightest chance of contamination are being turned away without being offloaded, says Dr. Amarasekera detailing the measures being implemented by a high-level Joint Task Force to ward off the bird flu from Sri Lanka's shores.

The department has also set up a hotline (Dr. Ranjinie Hettiarachchi on 081-2388462) for anyone seeking information. The Task Force headed by the Director-General and comprising the Food and Drugs Director of the Health Department, the Chief Food Inspector, the Chief Epidemiologist, the Director, Animal Production, the Director, Veterinary Research, the Chief Animal Quarantine Officer, the Epidemiologist of the Animal Production Department and the Quarantine Feed Registrar is on alert, meeting weekly on the changing situation.

The officials are also advising farmers not to entertain foreigners on their farms and are working with airport officials to get all those who have been in an infected country, visiting farms, to report to quarantine officials stationed at the airport. "We have quarantine officials both at the airport and the port," said Dr. Amarasekera.

A look at the world map highlighting the danger areas from the World Health Organization (WHO), screams red all over Asia with just Sri Lanka and India "untouched" in this region.

What is avian or bird flu? Influenza viruses can infect several animal species including birds, pigs, horses, seals and whales and those that infect birds are called avian influenza viruses. Wild birds, especially water birds, are believed to be the natural hosts of these viruses, which they carry in their intestines. However the viruses do not affect them. On the other hand, infected domestic birds become very ill and die. Infected birds shed the virus in saliva, nasal secretions and faeces and contact with these causes the virus to spread.

Earlier there were no indications that the avian flu virus, could spread to humans, but the bug did jump species and human infections and outbreaks have been reported since 1997. The bird flu strain currently spreading in Asia is H5N1.

The bird flu causes a wide range of symptoms in humans including fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, eye infections, pneumonia, acute respiratory distress, viral pneumonia and other severe and life-threatening complications.

Experts fear that the longer the bird flu virus is in circulation infecting people, the greater the danger that it will mutate or change and be transmitted more rapidly between humans, exposing the global population to a new strain of a more virulent influenza. "There may be little or no resistance to the new disease in humans," say doctors who fear a pandemic. When a virus spreads rapidly through a population it is called a flu epidemic, which doctors say happens nearly every year and when a virus spreads across the world it becomes a pandemic.

Based on historical patterns, influenza pandemics are said to occur, on average, three to four times each century, with the 20th century experiencing the great influenza pandemic of 1918-19 (the 'Spanish flu' is believed to have killed between 20-40 million people), the 'Asian flu' of 1957-58 (which killed 100,000) and the 'Hong Kong flu' of 1968-69 (which killed over 700,000).

All three pandemics are believed to have originated from Asia dubbed the "traditional cradle of influenza" and fears are rising that the huge animal and bird population living in close proximity to two-thirds of the world's people could set off another pandemic in the region.

Food safety expert Hans Wagner of the Food and Agriculture Organization, commenting on the crisis in Thailand, has told the Far Eastern Economic Review (February 5 issue) that the H5N1 virus can survive two to four days in fowl cadavers and that it could take less than one gram of infected fowl faeces to infect as many as one million fowl livestock.

In Sri Lanka, the authorities attempting to plug all channels of contamination have banned even chicken feed ingredients (corn and soya meal) usually brought from abroad including some infected countries. Now corn and soya meat is being imported only from India, which has so far shown no signs of bird flu. "We are insisting that the meal sent from there too should be accompanied by a fumigation certificate from the government," says Dr. Amarasekera. Fumigation at high temperature will effectively kill the germs.

There are also checks on "biologicals" (samples used for postmortems etc) being taken in and out of the country, he says. The Sunday Times learns from the All-Island Poultry Association that under normal circumstances Sri Lanka imports day-old parent chicks - 200,000 per year -- from Malaysia, India, UK, USA, France and Netherlands and chicken meat including breast, thighs, legs etc and allied products like sausages - 100,000 kilos per month -- from Australia, USA, Netherlands and China.

"We have been bringing down chicken feed ingredients such as soya and corn meal from India, Vietnam and USA and meat and bone meal from India, Thailand, Denmark and Australia," says Dr. D.D. Wanasinghe, Chairman of the Poultry Association, which has 1,500 corporate and farmer members from all over the country.

In the face of the bird flu threat, the import system has been changed drastically and "we assure the consumer with all responsibility that there is no danger in eating chicken", says Dr. Wanasinghe.

Around 75,000 farmer-families are engaged in poultry production with about 200,000 being involved with input supplies such as producing feed, milling the feed, transport etc. and Dr. Wanasinghe estimates that about one million depend on this industry. "The poultry industry is worth an estimated Rs. 18 billion, with a working capital of Rs. 19 million a month," he says, adding that at the first sign of infection his association would immediately inform the public and destroy infected fowl.

The Sunday Times also learns that veterinary surgeons have been urged to be vigilant and report any high mortality rate recorded on poultry farms immediately. With regard to the other carriers of bird flu -- migratory birds, vets have been alerted to identify where they congregate and nest and carry out investigations on farms in close proximity for signs of the disease. “The doors have been tightly bolted and I hope we will escape the bird flu,” adds Dr. Amarasekera of the Dept. of Animal Production.

Be extra watchful-Dr. Peiris
"The most important thing is to increase surveillance. If you do not look, you will not find. Then when you find, it will be too late, because by that time, the outbreak will have spread to a wide area. That is really what happened in many of the countries that were affected," said Dr. Sriyal Malik Peiris, the Hong Kong based Sri Lankan doctor linked to a major breakthrough in fighting Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), in an interview with The Sunday Times.

The source of the most recent human infection is exposure to LIVE poultry infected with H5N1 or carcasses of recently dead birds that have died of H5N1. "Well-cooked eggs or chicken do not pose any danger. The virus is killed by heat. However, it is not advisable to eat uncooked or poorly cooked eggs or chicken anyway for a number of reasons including salmonellosis," explains Dr. Peiris who was part of a team which isolated the virus which caused SARS.

On the possibility of bird flu invading our shores, he says since the virus now appears to affect wild birds too, there is the possibility of it crossing borders by this route. "But so far, Sri Lanka's nearest neighbour, India, has not reported any evidence of bird flu. So that is a reassurance."

With regard to the importation of ingredients for poultry feed and possible contamination, Dr. Peiris is of the view that it is not likely to be a problem. "The problem is contamination by material being transported between farm to farm which allows any infection to be spread between farms. Not so much from new feed."

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