Fighting The Bird Flu

There is an avian flu emergency in the nation's capital. We are far from exaggerating a situation, which calls for the stoppage of the movement of live poultry in the nation's capital according to government veterinarians.

Indeed as we compose this commentary, this order has been issued and poultry movement banned until further notice.

Such technical matters are rather difficult to audit. Be it as it may, we can discuss aspects of it which are of public interest and digestible by all.

With a penchant for taking serious things for granted and marginalizing them, Ghanaians, we can imagine, are not treating this subject with the seriousness it deserves.

The repercussions of not taking this issue seriously can be lethal and we would rather the government agency in charge of such matters shows more concern than we are seeing now.

This way Ghanaians would do what is expected of them and the avian flu would be kept at bay before it spreads beyond Accra. There are however glaring shortcomings in the management of the health challenge.

The avian flu issue started in May but little or insignificant education has gone out to the relevant publics since then.

We are referring to the poultry farmers, some of whom do not even belong to the recognized association.

It is the members of this association who understand what avian flu is all about.

These farmers have an issue with how the subject has been handled so far and we tend to agree with them somewhat.

The association of poultry farmers should have been engaged to stop a poultry epidemic whose bird-to-man effect should be prevented by all means possible.

Farmers should be encouraged to invite the experts to come and inspect their farms when they suspect any symptoms of avian flu infection.

Such encouragement should take the form of dangling compensation packages in front of them.

Otherwise any attempts at culling infected birds would not receive the necessary encouragement from farmers.

There appears to be a no-love-lost relationship between the poultry farmers association and the agriculture ministry and this can deal a telling effect on the war against avian flu.

Adequate resources should be made available to the Veterinary Department to fight the flu otherwise all the media talk would amount to nothing of significant value.

Even the announcement of the banning of the movement of poultry and their consumption appears to have been made without any input from the farmers whose president was on the airwaves yesterday justifiably peeved at their sidelining by the Agriculture Ministry's Veterinary Services Department.

Stopping the movement of live poultry would be a tough one, especially since Saturday is eid ul fitr. Muslims use poultry for this festival and it is left to be seen whether there would be strict adherence to the Veterinary Services Department's advice.

We have serious doubts about how far the warning would go when cages of poultry would certainly be displayed at the Nima Market and elsewhere on Friday and Saturday morning.

The authorities should do more if indeed there is bird flu.

Restricting the ban to Accra does not make sense since the disease came from Burkina through the North.

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