East Africa Needs A Regional Approach to Bird Flu

East Africa urgently needs a regional approach to prevent and manage any threat of bird flu as experience with H5N1 HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza) in West Africa shows. Nigeria discovered H5N1 in its northernmost Kaduna state in January 2006 but failed to reveal the outbreak to neighboring countries or the rest of the world for over three weeks. Consequently, the virus had a free hand to spread within Kaduna and to other states. Within less than four weeks of the outbreak being confirmed on February 8 2006 by the Federal Government, the virus had been detected in seven contiguous states across the northern and central part of Nigeria plus the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. The virus then proceeded to pick off neighboring West African countries one by one. To date, eight West African countries have reported outbreaks of bird flu which is almost certainly entrenched if not endemic in poultry within at least some of these countries.

Rita Njau the World Health Organization’s (WHO) acting director of preventive services in Tanzania called for a regional approach to address the risk of H5N1 HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza) in East Africa Njau told Voice of America (VOA) English to Africa reporter Douglas Mpuga how the region’s huge bodies of water (rivers and lakes) add to the risk. “The threat is quite real. Migratory birds take this path twice a year as they migrate either from the southern or northern hemisphere. So we do have a potential threat” (of an outbreak), she said.

In 2006, when H5N1 hit Nigeria in the west and Egypt in the north east, the WHO established a task force that combined relevant institutions within Tanzania to address the impending threat. Other United Agencies (UN) were involved and a committee was set up to discuss and consider what preparation and action would be required to handle a potential emergency involving H5N1 HPAI.

Njau told VOA about the WHO’s current contingency plans based on learning from previous experience of H5N1 elsewhere in Africa. She stressed the importance of informing the population so they know exactly what to do (or not to do) in the event of an outbreak. Rita Njau says more effort is required to get the various countries in East Africa to cooperate in planning a strategy to prevent bird flu or to combat the disease if it arrives. “I don’t think we have done as much as we should”, she told VOA. “There are plans to look at the issue (avian flu) as an east African problem. These plans involve looking at it holistically as a regional problem instead of country by country.” The WHO and other UN agencies have provided technical and financial support to countries across the region in poultry sample testing and virus detection technology.