H5N1 bird flu reaches Africa (New Scientist) So What?

[Guest guest]

" ...40,000 poultry, mainly laying hens, have died since 10 January "

Not mentioned by the " population control guys " is " perspective " ....

 

1.) The U.S.A., one country, slaughters 6 billion chickens a year (many in

Arkansas); 40,000 is " peanuts "

 

2.) Since 10 January, more than double (80,000) HUMANS have died in Africa of

just one disease--malaria (and AIDS AND diarhea have EACH claimed similar/larger

numbers) Not a word; planned, expected. 80 avian flu deaths---from a virus that

has been around for a century. What are we up to now? 78 " attributed " avian

deaths? Regular " Flu " kills over 20,000 AMERICANS yearly, anyway. Look at the

links---what are we being told? Hey! I have an idea---let's make a vaccine for

fear and then scare everybody.

(Mod note: Or cook one in a biolab and kill many, many people.)

 

Take care, UncBob

 

 

Malaria Facts | CDC Malaria

In areas of Africa with high malaria transmission, an estimated 990000 people

died of malaria in 1995 – over 2700 deaths per day, or 2 deaths per minute

 

 

H5N1 bird flu reaches Africa

 

Updated 12:24 09 February 2006

NewScientist.com news service

Debora MacKenzie

 

 

 

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The H5N1 bird flu virus has been confirmed in north-central Nigeria.

Scientists had feared the virus would reach Africa, where human poverty and

disease could combine with millions of highly susceptible backyard poultry to

produce many human infections, and potentially a human pandemic virus.

But New Scientist can reveal that the location of Africa’s first reported

outbreak should not come as a surprise. The region affected is right beside a

major wintering ground for two relatively common species of duck. Those ducks

shared breeding grounds in Siberia last summer with birds that winter in Turkey

and around the Black Sea, where the virus also appeared recently.

“We are facing a serious international crisis,” said Samuel Jutzi, head of

animal health at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome, Italy. He is

pleading for any further die-offs of poultry in the region to be reported

immediately.

The World Animal Health Organization (OIE) in Paris, France, reported on

Wednesday that 40,000 poultry, mainly laying hens, have died since 10 January at

a commercial farm near Igabi in Kaduna state, a small town 150 kilometres south

of the northern city of Kano. The owners initially tried antibiotics.

But the cause has now been confirmed as highly pathogenic H5N1 by the OIE’s

collaborating centre for bird flu in Padua, Italy. Moreover, it is the same

strain that appeared in wild birds at Qinghai Lake in China in spring 2005, and

has since travelled across Siberia to Turkey and the Black Sea.

Summer breeding grounds As it has everywhere it has gone, the virus is

devastating poultry in the region, with Nigerian agricultural authorities

reporting the death of 150,000 birds in Kano and Kaduna states, and more

outbreaks reported in other parts of Nigeria.

Furthermore, Kano is near the Hadejia-Nguru inland river delta, which is a

major wintering location for Northern pintail and garganey ducks. These species

summer in breeding grounds across Siberia, where the Qinghai strain of H5N1

infected poultry and wild birds in summer 2005. They then winter in Turkey,

around the Black Sea, and in West Africa. The Qinghai strain has already broken

out in Turkey and around the Black Sea, apparently carried by migrants..

The authoritative 1996 Atlas of Anatidae [ducks, geese and swans] Populations

of Africa and Western Europe says the Northern pintail wintering in the Black

Sea and Mediterranean basins “are lumped with those wintering in West Africa as

a single large population”. On average, 18,000 pintails winter each year at

Hadejia-Nguru. Similar numbers of garganey ducks follow the same migration and

500,000 of each species winter at nearby Lake Chad.

Some of the Northern pintail wintering now in Britain and along Europe’s North

Sea and Atlantic coasts also spent last summer on the same breeding grounds as

the pintail that subsequently flew to the Black Sea, Turkey and West Africa.

 

 

 

 

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