By Gabriel Ewepu

Following the outbreak of avian influenza popularly called bird flu in Nigeria, which affected poultry farms in18 states resulted to huge losses by farmers, the Registrar, Veterinary Council of Nigeria, VCN, Dr. Markus Avong, explained how the disease was contained.

Avong said the federal and state governments in partnership with donor agencies put in place swift measures to contain the further spread of the disease and the result was tremendous.

He said: “The result really is that the containment limited the outbreak to just 18 states and of course we are expecting a decrease of the amount of the disease in the 18 states. The consciousness of the farmers in those states and indeed their risk perception of the disease have increased.

“The entire emergency preparedness structure put in place during the 2006 and 2008 avian influenza outbreak was resuscitated both at the federal and state levels. Some inputs were equally given to farmers, and also donor countries were part and parcel of the technical committee at the federal level, which include the World Bank and others.

“Awareness was created among the farmers and before the outbreak the risk perception index of avian influenza was very low among the farmers but when the outbreak occurred with much education perception of the risk of the disease increased, because getting the awareness of the risk increases the consciousness about it on what to do and not to do to curtail, and that helped to a large extent in containing the disease.”

However, he further stated that poultry business has bounced back following the containment as there was gradual picking up of patronage of poultry products in the states.

“Again because of the success in containment the poultry and poultry product business is picking up. As at that time the disease was on there was a drop in patronage.

“From my investigation poultry farmers in Jos were finding it difficult to sell their poultry products and I am aware the market is picking up. In other words, even those whose farmers were not affected somehow suffered because of poor patronage but now picking up,” Avong stated.

On the area of compensating poultry farm owners according to Avong they have been compensated, which also served as an important strategy of control during the 2006, 2008 episode of the disease, although he said quiet a lot of birds were lost to the disease.