May 9, 2006	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, May 8: Experts at a seminar here on Monday unanimously declared chicken products safe for consumption, but asked the government to launch a mass awareness campaign on bird flu and press people associated with the poultry business to take precautionary measures.

They asked the people to wash eggs before keeping them in refrigerators and try to select healthy chickens at shops. Normally, cooking chicken at 70 degree centigrade kills the H5N1 virus, but here in Pakistan, it is usually boiled at 100 degree centigrade or fried at 180 degrees, after which virus could not survive, they added.

Sustainable Development Policy Institute had organised the seminar on bird flu crisis.

National Institute of Health (NIH) Executive Director Lt-Gen (retired) Prof Dr K A Karamat said avian influenza was basically a disease of birds and it had nothing to do with humans. During the past eight years, only 206 suspected cases of bird flu were registered worldwide, out of which 114 people died.

However, he made it clear that the cause of death was not bird flu, but other diseases like pneumonia. However, the flu virus was found in their bodies. The NIH laboratory had been acknowledged internationally as an authentic lab. He said all the blood samples taken from the bird flu suspects in Pakistan were negative.

Dr Mohammad Afzal, federal government’s spokesman on avian flu, said H5N1 and H7N1 were known diseases of birds and existed in the migratory birds for centuries. He said it was now confirmed that humans contacted the flu from birds by direct contact or through inhalation.

That was why most of the affected persons were those who remained in close contact with the infected birds.

Experts, he added, feared that after entering human body, the virus could mutate and acquire a form in which it could transfer from human to human, which might cause a pandemic.

Therefore, governments across the globe were taking stringent measures to control the situation.

Though livestock was primarily a provincial subject, the federal government has been taking measures to counter this threat since mid 90s.

President of the Pakistan chapter of the World Poultry Sciences Association Dr Mohammad Sadiq alleged that vaccine- producing companies based in the western countries, especially Switzerland, had created a sense of fear among the chicken consumers worldwide by creating bird flu scare.

“They want to sell their vaccines and medicines. Only a small number of people have died during the last eight year. Compare this average with those who died of cancer, malaria or water-borne diseases.