KARACHI, Feb 11: Speakers at a seminar on Monday called for educating the masses and an increased social mobilisation about the risk perceptions linked to avian influenza (AI).

They observed that the disease had already made its way into the country posing a threat to poultry, farm workers, consumers of poultry products and other people.

Well-coordinated initiatives are needed to be taken by the government agencies concerned, they stressed while calling for a careful dissemination of preventive health education vis-à-vis the threat.

The seminar was organised for media people jointly by Unicef and the Sindh health department. Health care professionals and other stakeholder spoke on the behaviours and level of preparedness in case of an outbreak. “The AI virus of H5N1 strains spreads easily and substantially among human beings,” they noted.

Dr Abdul Majid, the special secretary in public health department, and Deidre Kiernan, the Chief Field Officer of Sindh Unicef, were also present at the seminar.

The provincial focal person on bird flu, Dr Shakeel Mullick of the Sindh health department, referred to the two recent H5N1 virus outbreaks at Karachi poultry farms and reports of similar developments in other parts of the country, and said that the situation had become a matter of concern as the virus had already caused human deaths across the globe.

“The virus has crossed the species barriers to infect humans on at least three occasions in recent years,” he observed, and suggested that protective measures were essentially needed.

In this context, he called for provision of personal protection equipment to poultry workers, administration of the relevant vaccines to birds and availability of a surveillance system to avert transmission of the virus from birds to human beings.

Communication Officer of Unicef, Islamabad, Sheeba Afghani said that her organisation realised the need for social mobilisation at the community level on the issue and for this purpose it had arranged for literatures, leaflets and posters meant for the general public, especially poultry farmers and workers, in collaboration with the ministry of health, Islamabad. “As far as the objective of creating awareness of the issue is concerned, it is achieved but the risk perception appears low,” she remarked.

Representing poultry farmers, Zafarul Islam said that it was careless and improper dissemination of news and information regarding an outbreak that the poultry industries had to incur huge financial losses over the past few years. He pointed out that there was no significant evidence man-to-man transmission of the virus, adding that Pakistan, like many other countries, appeared to be a victim of hyper supposition.

Bird mortality on a large scale in extreme weather conditions are a routine phenomenon that the poultry farmers have been experiencing for long, according to him.