According to NY Times, The health and veterinary authorities on Friday reported outbreaks of avian flu hundreds of miles apart on opposite ends of Nigeria. In Lagos, the southern commercial center, 3,300 birds at a live bird market showing symptoms were culled, said Nigeria’s chief veterinary officer, Dr. Abdulganiyu Abubakar, in a
report to the World Organization for Animal Health, an agency that tracks disease outbreaks.
report to the World Organization for Animal Health, an agency that tracks disease outbreaks.
In Kano State, in northern Nigeria, an unspecified number of birds showing a high mortality rate were culled from a poultry farm. In both cases, blood samples tested positive for an H5 strain of avian influenza, officials quoted by Nigerian news media said. It was not immediately clear whether the birds were afflicted with H5N1, which is highly pathogenic and can infect humans.
H5N1 first spread from Asia to Europe and Africa in the late 1990s and is a recurrent problem in domesticated bird populations. Nigeria was the first country in Africa to report H5N1 in poultry, in 2006, according to the World Health Organization
Culled from: NY Times.
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