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Bird flu: No ducking this
WANT TO keep off chicken after the bird flu outbreak in Maharashtra? Wait till you hear about domestic ducks. They are silent reservoirs of a highly ?pathogenic? or lethal virus. Worse, they show no signs of illness themselves, but transmit the virus to other birds. All this puts a spanner in efforts to control any outbreak.
WANT TO keep off chicken after the bird flu outbreak in Maharashtra? Wait till you hear about domestic ducks.
They are silent reservoirs of a highly ‘pathogenic’ or lethal virus. Worse, they show no signs of illness themselves, but transmit the virus to other birds. All this puts a spanner in efforts to control any outbreak.
There is more bad news. A World Health Organisation study on bird flu says even the H5N1 virus has become more lethal than in previous years. It has expanded its host range, infecting and killing mammalian species, which were previously considered resistant to avian influenza viruses.
The behaviour of the virus in its natural reservoir may be changing.
According to public health experts, the virus can improve its transmissibility among human beings through two principal mechanisms.
The first is ‘re-assortment’ where genetic material is exchanged between human and avian viruses during co-infection.
‘Re-assortment’ can result in a fully transmissible pandemic virus, marked by a sudden surge of cases with explosive spread.
The second mechanism is a process of adaptive mutation, where the capability of the virus to bind itself to human cells increases during subsequent infection of humans. This mechanism allows some time for defensive action before an explosive spread.
Each additional human case gives the virus an opportunity to improve its transmissibility and thus develops into a pandemic strain, says Dr Anil Mishra, member of the rapid response team formed to study the spread of bird flu, in Uttar Pradesh.
Influenza pandemics can rapidly infect virtually all countries. Once an international spread begins, pandemics are considered unstoppable, as coughing and sneezing helps the virus spread.
Stop the scare from spreading
MEMBERS OF the Meat Murga Vyarpaari Kalyan Mahasamiti (MMVKM) met on Monday to discuss removal of shops from city limits. But they ended up debating about the bird flu scare that to them seemed to be a greater threat.
Says general secretary of MMVKM Mohd Iqbal Qureshi, “Past experiences show that the trade during such scares suffered losses up to 70 per cent. Already, there is drop in the business.”
“It looks to be design of the multi-national companies to pip us and bring in packaged raw meat. In the past couple of years, there have been quite a few instance of such scares in various parts of the world, the impact of which was seen here almost immediately,” said Chaudhari A Qureshi, patron of MMVKM. On the one hand the Union government itself told you there was no need to get scared and on the other hand it had asked the hospitals to be prepared for a sickness that had no patients yet, the office bearers of the association of mutton and chicken sellers in the city said.
“Efforts should be made to check the cause and provide treatment if a case is found than to spread scare of the disease in UP. If required entry of chicken from Maharastra should be banned for another couple of weeks, but the scare should not spread,” said AK Singh, legal advisor to MMVKM.
