Snowy Owl
Retired in 2010, In Memoriam
BIRD FLU: A DEADLY DIMENSION
http://www.tribune.com.ng/15022007/edit.html
http://www.tribune.com.ng/15022007/edit.html
NIGERIA has recorded, alarmingly, its first case of a human victim of bird flu. The victim, a 22-year-old woman, was a resident of Lagos and died on January 17, according to the Minister of Information, Mr. Frank Nweke Jr.
IT is unclear how the woman came to be treated in an expensive hospital.
Who sent her there and who paid the bills? The woman was admitted to the hospital on January 15 but died two days later. She had earlier been admitted to a smaller hospital which, the Lagos State government claimed, according to a newspaper report, misdiagnosed her illness.
DOCTORS in the expensive hospital were also unable to diagnose the woman?s illness as bird flu and a senior doctor in the hospital said it would be hasty to conclude, as the minister had already done, that she died of bird flu.
WHEN bird flu reached Nigeria last year, the country had no means of properly identifying the disease, as we noted in our editorial of Monday, 13 February, 2006. Samples from some dead chickens had to be taken to Italy for laboratory analysis. The samples tested for the H5N1 strain of the disease which is lethal to both bird and man.
THERE was excited talk last year but no proof that some Nigerian poultry workers had died of the disease. It was as if some people, all of them foreigners, wanted Nigerians to catch the disease. Millions of Nigerians were said to be at risk of the disease as poverty had compelled them to rear and struggle for space with chickens.
MUCH was made of the fact that Nigeria was the first African country to report an outbreak of the disease and though the country immediately culled thousands of chickens, it was said to pose a great danger to the world as it was deliberately not doing enough to curb the further spread of the pandemic.
BUT it now appears that the Nigerian government has quietly been working very hard.
Only one year ago it had no facilities to test for flu in birds but it now has enough facilities and experts to test for the disease in humans. Samples from the dead woman, according to the minister of information, were tested by 13 experts in virology and laboratory science and that they used facilities present in the country.
MR. Nweke said samples from the same dead woman had been sent to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) based in the United States for confirmation as prescribed by international agreement.
WHY did the government not wait for communication from WHO and CDC before making the report of the Nigerian experts known?
Bird flu in humans is a far more serious thing than an athlete testing positive for performance enhancing drugs. And some people have questioned the fairness of calling an athlete a cheat on the sole evidence of the ?A? sample. They said the result of a dope test should never be announced until the ?B? sample had been analysed. It is rare that a ?B? sample contradicts an announced ?A? sample.
THESE observations have not been made to discourage the Nigerian experts who tested fluid and tissue taken from the dead woman or to downplay the real risk bird flu poses to Nigerians. We acknowledged this danger in our editorial of Wednesday, 9 November, 2005 - the first Nigerian newspaper to write on the disease - we stated:
?THERE is panic in the world over bird flu but Nigeria is carrying on as if it is proof against the disease?
AND in our editorial of 13 February, 2006, we suggested ways of halting the spread of the disease among birds and of saving the lives of people unfortunate enough to contract the disease from chickens.
IT seems that the accurate diagnosis of the disease in humans is a serious problem in Nigeria as it is in some other parts of the world.
It is a new disease and most doctors are unfamiliar with its signs and symptoms. It mimics some other diseases.
The young woman that the minister of information said died of bird flu was diagnosed with enteric fever in the first hospital she was taken to. And the diagnosis of bird flu was apparently not made by the well qualified doctors in the expensive hospital where she was treated for two days but did not recover.
THE federal government in collaboration with the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) should organise training programmes for doctors on bird flu. These should be held in different parts of the country.
COULD the woman have been saved by the accurate diagnosis of her illness?
The minister of information spoke extensively about what the government was doing to prevent the disease, but did not say a word, to the best of our knowledge, about providing medical relief for people like the unfortunate young woman.
Has the country a store of vaccines to treat bird flu in human?
THE vaccines are in great demand but are in short supply. The United States and a few rich countries tried to buy up the available vaccines in October, 2005. And last year, President George Bush asked Congress to approve $17 billion to try to keep the disease out of the United States and to defeat it if it entered it.
THE Nigerian government took certain measures to try to stop the spread of the disease among birds last year. One of them was the offer of N250 for every chicken destroyed in the areas with proven cases of bird flu. But as late as last November, several months after the birds were destroyed, some farmers complained that they had not been paid.
This is likely to discourage other farmers from notifying the authorities when they suspect that their birds are stricken with flu.
IT is unclear how the woman came to be treated in an expensive hospital.
Who sent her there and who paid the bills? The woman was admitted to the hospital on January 15 but died two days later. She had earlier been admitted to a smaller hospital which, the Lagos State government claimed, according to a newspaper report, misdiagnosed her illness.
DOCTORS in the expensive hospital were also unable to diagnose the woman?s illness as bird flu and a senior doctor in the hospital said it would be hasty to conclude, as the minister had already done, that she died of bird flu.
WHEN bird flu reached Nigeria last year, the country had no means of properly identifying the disease, as we noted in our editorial of Monday, 13 February, 2006. Samples from some dead chickens had to be taken to Italy for laboratory analysis. The samples tested for the H5N1 strain of the disease which is lethal to both bird and man.
THERE was excited talk last year but no proof that some Nigerian poultry workers had died of the disease. It was as if some people, all of them foreigners, wanted Nigerians to catch the disease. Millions of Nigerians were said to be at risk of the disease as poverty had compelled them to rear and struggle for space with chickens.
MUCH was made of the fact that Nigeria was the first African country to report an outbreak of the disease and though the country immediately culled thousands of chickens, it was said to pose a great danger to the world as it was deliberately not doing enough to curb the further spread of the pandemic.
BUT it now appears that the Nigerian government has quietly been working very hard.
Only one year ago it had no facilities to test for flu in birds but it now has enough facilities and experts to test for the disease in humans. Samples from the dead woman, according to the minister of information, were tested by 13 experts in virology and laboratory science and that they used facilities present in the country.
MR. Nweke said samples from the same dead woman had been sent to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) based in the United States for confirmation as prescribed by international agreement.
WHY did the government not wait for communication from WHO and CDC before making the report of the Nigerian experts known?
Bird flu in humans is a far more serious thing than an athlete testing positive for performance enhancing drugs. And some people have questioned the fairness of calling an athlete a cheat on the sole evidence of the ?A? sample. They said the result of a dope test should never be announced until the ?B? sample had been analysed. It is rare that a ?B? sample contradicts an announced ?A? sample.
THESE observations have not been made to discourage the Nigerian experts who tested fluid and tissue taken from the dead woman or to downplay the real risk bird flu poses to Nigerians. We acknowledged this danger in our editorial of Wednesday, 9 November, 2005 - the first Nigerian newspaper to write on the disease - we stated:
?THERE is panic in the world over bird flu but Nigeria is carrying on as if it is proof against the disease?
AND in our editorial of 13 February, 2006, we suggested ways of halting the spread of the disease among birds and of saving the lives of people unfortunate enough to contract the disease from chickens.
IT seems that the accurate diagnosis of the disease in humans is a serious problem in Nigeria as it is in some other parts of the world.
It is a new disease and most doctors are unfamiliar with its signs and symptoms. It mimics some other diseases.
The young woman that the minister of information said died of bird flu was diagnosed with enteric fever in the first hospital she was taken to. And the diagnosis of bird flu was apparently not made by the well qualified doctors in the expensive hospital where she was treated for two days but did not recover.
THE federal government in collaboration with the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) should organise training programmes for doctors on bird flu. These should be held in different parts of the country.
COULD the woman have been saved by the accurate diagnosis of her illness?
The minister of information spoke extensively about what the government was doing to prevent the disease, but did not say a word, to the best of our knowledge, about providing medical relief for people like the unfortunate young woman.
Has the country a store of vaccines to treat bird flu in human?
THE vaccines are in great demand but are in short supply. The United States and a few rich countries tried to buy up the available vaccines in October, 2005. And last year, President George Bush asked Congress to approve $17 billion to try to keep the disease out of the United States and to defeat it if it entered it.
THE Nigerian government took certain measures to try to stop the spread of the disease among birds last year. One of them was the offer of N250 for every chicken destroyed in the areas with proven cases of bird flu. But as late as last November, several months after the birds were destroyed, some farmers complained that they had not been paid.
This is likely to discourage other farmers from notifying the authorities when they suspect that their birds are stricken with flu.