DAVAO CITY: A high-ranking health official has urged the public to immediately report to authorities poultry deaths so that measures can be immediately taken to thwart a possible outbreak of the dreaded avian influenza in the country.
“Report deaths of chickens because this will help us detect bird flu . . . The soonest we know, the more effort we’ll exert to prevent any spread,” Dr. Enrique Tayag, acting director of the National Epidemiology Center, said.
He added that the center has adopted the principle: “Report any case to detect early, quarantine the exposed, and isolate those who are sick.”
The Philippines remains bird-flu free.
Bird-flu prevention
A team, led by Tayag, was in the city for a four-day training of LGUs on surveillance and response to SARS, avian influenza and other infectious diseases,” which was attended by over 160 municipal and provincial health officers in Mindanao.
Tayag said the health department has shifted its prevention focus from chicken-human contamination to human-human infection.
“When the virus from chickens is transmitted to a human, who in turn infects another human, this is called ‘human influenza pandemic’ which is more serious than bird flu,” he said.
Tayag said monitoring is focused on preventing the spread of bird flu from chickens to people and averting any outbreak of the disease among the population.
He said the government has stockpiled on medicines for bird flu in humans but the supply is not enough.
WHO data on bird-flu cases
World Health Organization data showed that as of March 2006, the total number of laboratory-confirmed human cases of bird flu reached 175, and 95 died from the disease.
The top three countries with highest cumulative m ortality are Vietnam with 42 deaths, Indonesia with 20 and Thailand with 14.
--PNA
wew! so much hassle.....
BIRD FLU: H5N1 virus
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