State pays price for ignoring FAO recommendations

Surveillance against outbreaks of avian influenza

November 30, 2014 11:35 am | Updated 11:35 am IST - KOCHI:

Villagers burn the ducks culled by the Rapid Response Team of the Animal Husbandry Department at Vengal in the upper Kuttanad village of Peringara on Saturday. Photo: Leju Kamal

Villagers burn the ducks culled by the Rapid Response Team of the Animal Husbandry Department at Vengal in the upper Kuttanad village of Peringara on Saturday. Photo: Leju Kamal

Kerala is paying heavily for ignoring the recommendations of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for surveillance against outbreaks of pathogenic avian influenza.

An international conference on avian influenza and wild birds in 2006 had issued guidelines for checking the outbreaks, including field investigation by trained ornithologists and wildlife specialists. It had also called for developing a network of experts who could work with veterinary services to improve early disease detection capabilities.

The FAO had also called for collecting information on “migratory water bird species, population sizes, their migration routes and flyways, important congregation and mixing sites of water birds, and the main areas of interaction with more sedentary, locally migrant and peri-domestic birds.”

It had also suggested evolving a contingency plan and disease management system, including surveillance activities in “species which are most likely the hosts of the disease, and species that pose the greatest transmission risk due to behaviour and movements.” It had also warned against “the destruction of wild bird populations or their habitats to eliminate roosting or nesting sites in an effort to control, manage, or prevent possible introduction of the disease” as it was “neither scientifically sound nor justified from the standpoint of effectively preventing disease introduction”.

Though some instances of avian influenza had been reported from the State, Kerala had failed to take note of the international warnings and guidelines for increased surveillance, said an ornithologist.

Limited action

All that the State did during the earlier outbreaks was to ask birders and forest staff to look out for any indications of sick or dead birds, said a senior official of the Forest Department.

Senior officials of the Animal Husbandry Department too admitted that they had not acted on the warnings or guidelines of the FAO or other agencies.

They also admitted that Kerala had lost precious time in acting against the disease during the present outbreak. Though a massive death of ducks owned by a local farmer at Purakkad occurred on November 10, it was reported only on November 21. The pathogens might have spread to uninfected ducks during the 11 days as the incident went unreported. The farmers might have unsuccessfully tried medicines prescribed by local veterinarians, the official said. The first avian flu outbreak was reported in India in 2004 in Maharashtra.

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