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Spread of bird flu slows in Nigeria, officials say

Posted on: Wednesday, 10 May 2006, 06:41 CDT

By Estelle Shirbon

ABUJA (Reuters) - The spread of deadly H5N1 bird flu in Nigeria is slowing three months after the disease was first detected in Africa's most populous country, officials said on Wednesday.

The first African state to be hit by bird flu, Nigeria has not reported any human cases of the disease although experts warn surveillance may not be completely effective and cases may have gone undetected.

In the first few weeks, bird flu spread rapidly in poultry across the country despite measures to contain it such as culling and quarantine, and outbreaks were reported in 13 of Nigeria's 36 states and in the Federal Capital Territory.

But there have been no outbreaks in new states since the disease reached the largest city, Lagos, in late March.

"No new states have been affected since Lagos, but that doesn't mean the outbreaks have completely stopped," said Tony Joannis, head of the viral research department at the National Veterinary Research Institute which tests for bird flu.

"In the past two or three weeks we have had two new outbreaks in states that were already affected, Bauchi and Plateau," he told Reuters, adding the rate of new outbreaks had slowed dramatically.

Joannis said it would not be safe to consider the disease contained, but recent evidence suggested measures to prevent its spread were working better than at the start.

The H5N1 virus can infect people who come into close contact with sick birds. It has infected 206 people since late 2003 and killed at least 114, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

Scientists fear the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily from person to person, causing a global flu pandemic in which millions could die.

SEARCH FOR HUMAN CASES

Mohammed Belhocine, head of the WHO in Nigeria, said samples taken from people who had been in contact with sick birds at the sites of the confirmed outbreaks in Nigeria had tested negative.

"Surveillance needs to be reinforced as much as possible. In a country as huge as Nigeria, this is going to require a major effort over several months and indeed several years," he said.

Mechanisms to find and test possible human cases had been weak at the beginning of the crisis but had now improved enormously, Belhocine told Reuters.

Nigeria's public health system is almost non-existent and people are often buried without any medical check to determine the cause of death. This has raised fears human cases of bird flu may have gone undetected.

Many Nigerians stopped eating chicken after bird flu was confirmed, and a month later a poultry farmers' association reported sales had dropped by 85 percent.

The initial panic now seems to be receding.

"Business was terrible in the first few weeks ... but sales have started picking up now," said Joy Bankole, who sells frozen chicken at a shop in Lagos.

However, sales were still slower than before bird flu hit. "I used to sell one carton of frozen chicken in about four days, but it now takes about two weeks to sell one carton," she said.

Many Nigerians are too poor to afford the luxury of rejecting chicken if they are able to get hold of it.

"Bird flu or not, if I get chicken even now, I will gladly eat it," said Benjamin Ajayi, a street trader in Lagos.

(Additional reporting by Tume Ahemba in Lagos)

Source: REUTERS

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