CHITRAL, Feb 25: Veterinary experts have urged role of media in making people aware especially those associated with the cattle farming to adopt safety measures to avoid outbreak of diseases transmitted from animals to humans and vice versa.
The experts were delivering lectures here the other day at the concluding session of the three-day capacity building workshop for media persons organised by Relief International. They said the people in the rural areas dealing with cattle, pet animals and birds were the most vulnerable to zoonotic diseases and they needed to be sensitised on scientific lines.
District project manager Dr Riazur Rahman, veterinary officer Dr Waqar Ahmed of Relief International and public health specialist of health department Dr Israrullah presented their studies and highlighted the impending danger of zoonotic diseases in Chitral.
They said deadly diseases like anthrax, avian influenza and leishmaniasis had threatened the area people. They said anthrax affected goats and sheep and can be transmitted to humans in three ways; by infection through skin, ingestion from carcasses of dead animals and the most deadly form is the inhalation of anthrax spores.
The health experts said if inhaled the anthrax spores migrated to lymph glands in the chest where they proliferated and produced toxins often causing death. They noted with concern that goats and sheep were raised in different valleys in large number but hardly the cattle farmers were aware of the diseases and their vulnerability.
Quoting a recent survey of an NGO, the speakers said almost in every household of the district, chicken was raised but the people were found totally ignorant about the diseases they carried and transmitted to the humans.
They said although the cases of avian influenza had been a rare case but the disease was quite common which attacked the chicken every year and any negligence can prove fatal for the human population.
They also warned the hunters of the potential danger of avian influenza which can be transmitted to them by the migratory birds they hunted and even a single case in the areas can cause outbreak.
The speakers also warned the shepherds and herdsmen of a skin disease leishmaniasis which is common in the sandy pastures surrounded by forest and such pastures were common in the northern part of Chitral.