Int’l - 700,000 birds culled in Nigeria since Avian flu outbreak, WHO official says

Published: October 23, 2006

Source : Today Online

Around 700,000 birds have been culled in Nigeria since the outbreak of Avian flu in February this year, according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) official. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) quoted Chijioke Osakwe, as giving the figure in a paper he presented at a public function in southeastern city of Enugu. Osakwe said the birds were culled at a cost of 560 million naira (4.3 million dollars/ 3.4 million euros). He said the country's poultry industry had 140 million birds, with "backyard" poultry farmers accounting for 60 per cent of the total, NAN said. The industry, he said, contributed nine per cent to the country's Gross Domestic Product. Quoting the World Bank's prediction of a 800-million-dollar annual loss in the global poultry sector due to the ravaging bird disease, Osakwe said efforts must be made by all stakeholders and the citizens to stem its spread. Avian flu was found in at least a dozen of Nigeria's 36 states, including Lagos, the nation's economic capital. The Nigerian government paid financial compensation to poultry farmers whose birds were culled across the country. Osakwe described bird Avian flu as a virus that did not require a passport to enter any country, and likened it to the "Spanish file" which spread across the globe, killing between 20 million and 40 million people between 1918 and 1919.

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