Countries continues to combat bird flu outbreak

Hong Kong, December 18: With the recent return of bird flu in Asia and Egypt, authorities from different countries are finding a way in order to control the outbreak of the disease.

The bird flu virus this time around was discovered in a poultry farm in Hong Kong which killed more than 100 chickens and led to the collection of almost 80,000 birds from other farms and markets.

Guan Yi, an expert on the H5N1 virus strain from the University of Hong Kong reported that poultry farms from different parts of the world should not be complacent with the use of vaccines because it does not offer full protection against the H5N1 virus and its mutations.

Yi explained, “That vaccine (used in Hong Kong) was made to fight an American strain of the H5N2, and it is very distant from the Guangdong strain of the H5N1 virus here.”

“When there were no outbreaks, we just assumed it was protective. Now that there is an outbreak (in the Hong Kong farm), we assume it is useless,” he further said.

Other countries affected by the bird flu outbreak are Cambodia, Indonesia, Egypt and India.

In Phnom Penh, the district south capital of Cambodia, poultry has been culled since a 19-year-old man was tested positive for the H5N1 strain of the virus last week. This man is already the eighth confirmed human case of the virus in the country.

Cambodia’s agriculture ministry has also created a 30-day ban for selling and transferring poultry in Kandal province.

In Indonesia, the virus has already infected two children with one of them killed by the virus while in Egypt.

The bird flu virus was also detected in India last month. Thousands of chickens are now being culled in West Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya. Health workers from the country are already observing more than a hundred people who showed signs of the virus but no human case has been confirmed.

The virus is already being studied and researchers have found out that it is continuously mutating thus, further limiting the effectiveness of the vaccine.

Albert Osterhaus, a virologist from the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam said: “The poultry vaccines do work if they are used correctly, but there are speculations that the strains that are being represented in the vaccine do not match well enough with the circulating virus.”