IVORY COAST: Ivory Coast to start slaughter after bird flu cases

Record ID: 182524

  • Title: IVORY COAST: Ivory Coast to start slaughter after bird flu cases
  • Date: 28th April 2006
  • Summary: FREE RANGING CHICKENS
  • Embargoed: 13th May 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Health,Lifestyle
  • Reuters ID: LVA2HXJ50J9C0LJXVJCXNHFXAF48
  • Story Text: Ivory Coast prepared to slaughter chickens and tightened restrictions on movements of poultry on Thursday (April 27) after reporting outbreaks of bird flu in two heavily populated neighbourhoods of its main city Abidjan.
    The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said late on Wednesday a total of 17 birds infected with the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu had been found in separate outbreaks in the Marcory Anoumabo and Treichville suburbs of Abidjan.
    Two local clinics had made the diagnosis, which the OIE expected to be confirmed by its own laboratory in Padua, Italy.
    "It frightens me what we heard on television but what can I do? I cannot say my birds are infected . Quite often we have one or two chickens which die, I throw them away but I never have which die," said one farmer.
    Ivory Coast is the sixth African nation to report the feared virus after Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Burkina Faso and Egypt, where the World Health Organisation says there have been 12 human cases, four of them fatal.
    Health experts fear Africa's poor human and animal health services, large backyard poultry population and lack of resources could help the disease to spread.
    The Marcory Anoumabo and Treichville suburbs are populous, working class districts dotted with street shacks selling grilled chicken and meat.
    "When people heard about bird flu it made that the chicken trade slow down a little. People are a little afraid," a chicken trader said.
    Scientists are concerned the H5N1 virus that has spread from Asia to the Middle East, Europe and Africa could mutate into a strain that could spark a human pandemic capable of killing millions of people.
    It has infected 204 people and killed 113 since 2003 but has not shown it is capable of passing easily from person to person.
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