Bird flu confirmed in Nigeria

LAGOS, Nigeria – Africa’s first outbreak of the deadly bird flu virus was reported Wednesday in a large commercial farm in Nigeria that raised chickens, geese and ostriches, and 46,000 birds were slaughtered.

International health officials called for help to prevent the spread of the disease on the world’s poorest continent, where governments are ill-equipped to combat it.

Nigeria said the outbreak was on a farm in Jaji, a village in the northern state of Kaduna. Agriculture Minister Adamu Bello said the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus was detected in samples taken Jan. 16 from birds on the farm.

Alex Thiermann, an expert with the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health, said it was not known how the virus entered Nigeria, but migratory waterfowl likely played a role because the country is on a major flyway. “The significance is that it’s a completely new continent that we need to be looking at,” Thiermann said.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation with 130 million people, said it would work aggressively to halt the flow of any sick birds to unaffected zones.

But sub-Saharan Africa, with about 600 million of the world’s poorest people, is particularly ill-suited to deal with a major health crisis. With weak and impoverished government institutions in regions where many people keep chickens for food, experts say any mass killings – often a first step in controlling bird flu – will be difficult to pull off.