Vets believe that while the flu virus is fairly innocuous in wild fowl, it spreads rapidly in poultry, the increased rate of transmission attributable to the cramped quarters of the farms. And while the virus spreads among domesticated fowl, it can, sometimes, morph into a strain that affects human beings. Thankfully, human-to-human transmission of bird flu is rare.
But that is no reason not to put up all defenses against this potentially deadly disease. Once it spreads among human population, the evolution of the virus is hard to track; in that case, there might be no way to preclude the possibility of it gaining in strength. The deadly effects of bird flu were well illustrated during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic which claimed the lives of anywhere between 50-100 million people around the world. By the 2009 worldwide pandemic, important lessons had been learned from the past and decisive measures taken to prevent its spread among human beings. Still, around 18,000 people had to succumb to it before the pandemic was contained in May, 2010. There thus is no room for complacency.
Not for the Regional Livestock Disease Investigation Office, Biratnagar, apparently. It was slow to start culling 6,500 infected chicken in two poultry farms in Sunsari district. Given the region´s experience with bird flu, one would have thought that the office would be better prepared than to frantically start looking around for Tamiflu—the antiviral that is a must for the people involved in culling—when the virus was confirmed in local poultry. The shortage of the vital medication in turn has delayed the culling, which could be dangerous. The longer the virus is present in the poultry population, the more the risk of its spread.
There also seems to be some kind of a delay in the culling process in Ilam. Failures have been evident on other fronts too. It is common knowledge that the virus is imported into Nepal through the porous Indian border. But no lasting measures (provision of fowl monitoring posts at border points, for instance) seems to have been taken to prevent inter-country transfer.
All this suggest Nepali authorities are taking the matter lightly. The country can ill afford it. A bird flu pandemic among the fowl in Nepal, and god forbid, its subsequent transfer to humans, could yield catastrophic results given the country’s dismal healthcare and disease-prevention systems.
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