World's biggest bird flu outbreak could take years to control: WHO

With more poultry affected over the past two months in the current bird flu epidemic in Asia than the total number in the world’s five previous largest outbreaks combined, the UN health agency has warned that it could take years to bring the present outbreaks under control.

Over the past two months, more than 100 million birds have either died of the disease or been culled in Asia, while there have been 33 confirmed cases of the disease’s transmission to humans, 22 of them fatal.

Bird flu has been confirmed in Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Laos, Thailand and Viet Nam and poultry has also been culled in Pakistan.

With so many adjacent countries affected, a region-wide strategy will be needed to ensure that gains in one country are not compromised by inadequate control in another, the World Health Organisation said.

“Even in countries with good surveillance, adequate resources, and geographically limited outbreaks, control has often taken up to two years,” the Geneva-based agency said.

“For these reasons and others, WHO has cautioned against assumptions that the outbreaks can be controlled in the immediate future.”

The agency warned that a number of factors would hamper disease control measures, including the concentration of poultry in backyard farms, the economic significance of the industry, the prevailing lack of experience in tackling these epidemics as well as an absence of adequate resources.

(gmcg)