Why Nigeria continues to have bird flu outbreaks – Veterinary Association

Dr Edgar Amos Sunday

Dr Edgar Amos Sunday is the National President of Nigerian Veterinary Medical Association, which is the professional association of all veterinary doctors in the country. In this interview, he said fighting diseases such as bird flu is difficult. Excerpts:

We have been having the outbreaks of avian influenza repeatedly in the last few years, what do you think has gone wrong for the disease to remain with us?
Let me place the discussion in proper perspective. The influenza viruses have been with humanity for a very long time. It assumed global importance in 1997 when some poultry farms were infected with the virus in Hong Kong, Asia and it destroyed hundreds of thousands of birds and eventually it affected human beings - some people died of the disease. The first time avian was reported in Africa was here in Nigeria in 2006 in the famous Sambawa Farms between 2006 and 2008, the diseases was completely eradicated from Nigeria within those two years and we never had Avian Influenza again until January 2015 when it was reported in live bird market in Lagos and some farms in Kano.

Between then and now, the disease has spread to 24 states and a few other local government areas. For one year now, we have consistently had Avian Influenza in the country and there are so many predisposing factors to the persistence of bird flu in the country.

First of all, you may ask what causes it. It is a virus that affects birds -both domestic and wild birds- particularly wild birds habour the virus. Nigeria occupies two internationally recognized fly ways for migratory birds: there is the East Africa- West-Asia flyway and there is the East-Atlantic fly way of migratory birds. We have captured a lot of birds - some from Germany and some from other parts of the world with tags on their legs. And there are wet lands in parts of Jigawa, Yobe, Niger, Bayelsa, Rivers and so on, where these migratory birds fly through. Of course, these birds don’t need visas to come to the country and it is possible for them to habour the virus and bring them in. If someone establishes a poultry farm nearby, it is possible for these birds to have access to them. Secondly, we have porous international borders and so if you have the viruses in some other countries like we do in Egypt, it is possible either through legitimate trade or through smuggling for people to bring in the virus through those countries.

 

 Thirdly, our own poultry production system is still backward. We have a lot of backyard poultry, where you have people keeping chickens, ducks, guinea fowl in the same place and they are not regulated unlike the commercial poultry farms where you have intensive management where whatever they eat is what you give them. But these ones get out, get whatever they want, then come back, it is possible to mix with others that are infected and then get the virus in.

Don’t we have the veterinary capability to deal with diseases such as bird flu in the country?
 We have weak veterinary infrastructure and the facilities are not there. The facility for optimum veterinary service delivery where you have swift diagnosis and treatment of diseases are not there. As I speak to you, we have 7,000 registered veterinary doctors but actually 5,000 to 6,000 in practice. Let me give you example with Turkey, which the country population is half of Nigeria, yet they have 22,000 veterinary doctors and Nigeria that has a population of 170 million people has only 5,000 to 6,000 practicing veterinary doctors.

If you come to specifics, you will even be very disappointed to discover that Oyo State, to give you an example, has only 15 veterinary doctors in its employment and has 33 local governments. About six of them are in the headquarters as senior veterinary medical officers, which means you have  nine to 10 veterinary doctors, manning 33 local governments. How will they be efficient and Oyo State perhaps has the largest poultry hub in the country. Come to River State, as I speak to you, there are only two veterinary doctors employed by the government - the Director and the Assistant Director.

What about the federal government?
The federal government does not have a single veterinary medical hospital anywhere in the country except those that are in the universities or research institutes. They depend on states and states don’t employ, so you don’t have the veterinary personnel in the field to effectively man and provide effective veterinary services.
Again, you should have what we call veterinary quarantine services at strategic positions between nations at our borders to ensure that anybody who wants to import animals is subjected to quarantine measures or in moments like where you have outbreaks, there should be control measures on movements from effected parts of the country to another. But when you don’t have the staff, what do you do?