This article is the first in our series on the evolving story of the avian flu virus by Dr. Lazarus who works for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) in Toronto. He will write an article each month that the avian flu remains topical and relevant.
by Cedric Lazarus D.V.M
To date, the dreaded H5N1 Avian Influenza (AI) virus has killed 108 people, all in Asia. In one three week period in January/February this year there was an unprecedented spread of the virus to 13 countries, reminding many of the domino theory of the 1960s.
More than 200 million birds have died from the virus or through widespread
culling by the veterinary authorities in efforts to eradicate or slow the spread of the disease. So far the virus has been confirmed in 45 countries on three continents and many experts expect it to arrive in the Americas some time this year.
In Canada (using SARS as a model), it is estimated that an AI pandemic would cost the health sector alone $300 million to $1.4 billion and over $5 billion in lost productivity and a 1% loss of GDP growth in the first quarter alone. The early projections for the worldwide economic loss according to some strategists
would be in excess of $800 billion with a $2.5 trillion contraction in global goods and services trade.
The big question is, are we prepared? Around the world it seems that many people are not at all worried about it, let alone prepared. Some say it is because the news media have beaten the pandemic horse to death while others say that people won’t act until the disease is right on their doorsteps. Many experts claim that we should prepare for the worse and hope that it does not happen.
Two years ago, at a meeting of poultry farmers in Jamaica, I likened Avian Influenza to a hurricane just starting to develop in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa which could either fizzle out, or develop into a category 1 or 2 storm with little consequence or into a giant category 4 or 5 hurricane with devastating consequences. The obvious dilemma is that we cannot predict exactly what will happen. It’s the same with Avian Influenza. So the
sensible thing would be to prepare for the worse and not to be caught off guard like New Orleans was last year with Hurricane Katrina.
When I was in veterinary school in the early 1980s, AI was not a very important topic. It rarely appeared on exam papers, mainly because it was a relatively rare disease and considered exotic; exotic meaning that it occurred “over there” not “over here.” It was also referred to as Fowl Plague, probably because it sometimes appeared apparently out of nowhere, killed a few thousand domestic poultry and then disappeared from whence it came, usually after the culling of thousands of in-contact and infected poultry.
AI is in fact not a new disease at all. Veterinary regulatory authorities worldwide have been tracking AI viruses for years and records will show that outbreaks have occurred from time to time and in many countries. Several different strains of the AI virus are known to exist in wild birds, long considered the natural reservoir of these viruses. Between 1983 and 1997 significant outbreaks due to strains other than the H5N1 have occurred in the USA, Mexico, Chile, Italy, Pakistan and Holland. Unless you were a veterinarian or someone involved in the poultry industry you probably never heard of these outbreaks.
However, apart from the Chilean outbreak, they all had a severe economic effect in the regions in which they occurred and were devastating to the poultry industry. These outbreaks were eventually controlled by a combination of quarantine, culling and in some instances vaccination.
Had it not been for the 1997 outbreak of AI caused by the H5N1 virus most
people would still not have paid AI much attention. A new saga in the AI chapter was written in Hong Kong when the virus spread through the poultry
population of the city infecting thousands of poultry, and to the total surprise of public health authorities, infecting a number of persons as well, of whom 6 died. An Avian Influenza virus had jumped the species barrier from poultry to humans with devastating effect. (The term “jumped the species barrier” had become popular in the UK at the height of the Mad Cow Disease outbreak in the mid 1990s after several persons died after apparently consuming for years beef contaminated with the Mad Cow Disease agent.)
In a successful effort to eradicate AI from Hong Kong, all 1.5 million chickens in the city were slaughtered. However, the human cases had scientists wondering whether or not H5N1 would one day turn into a pandemic similar to the 1919 influenza pandemic which was one of the deadliest events in human history, killing over 20 million persons around the globe.
