Bird flu scare comes to Panama

Bird flu has Panama on alert

by Eric Jackson, mostly from other media

Panamanian health and agricultural officials are on the lookout for the appearance of H5 avian influenza strain (bird flu), and scrambling to take measures to ensure that it doesn't show up here and that the people most at risk of catching it will be immunized if it does. The new flu virus made its first appearance in 1997 in East Asia and blossomed late last year and earlier this year in the same area, so far claimed the lives of more than 60 people in that region in 2005. The disease has also in recent weeks made its way to the Middle East and Eastern Europe, with some epidemiologists suspecting that it has been carried across international boundaries by migrating wild birds.

The fear is of a flu pandemic. The world has seen a number of those throughout the recorded medical history, with the very worst the one that swept across the war-torn world in 1918, killing some 40 million people and doing at least as much as allied offensives to prompt the German collapse that ended World War I.

When the H9 strain of the bird flu virus, considered one of the less dangerous and less contagious ones, made its appearance in Colombia in mid-October, authorities here promptly banned all the importation of all poultry and poultry products from that country. It is thought that this strain poses no direct human health threat, but Panama produces a lot of chicken for both the domestic and export markets and the economic threat to this industry was cause for substantial alarm.

When a case of the disease was discovered in a parrot imported into the United Kingdom from Suriname, no similar action was announced because Panama doesn't import poultry from that South American country. In Peru, which so far has seen no outbreak, turkey farmers who export to Panama have been denied the necessary health certifications for the prime time of their business year, the Christmas holidays. Though the excuse given in the Peruvian case was of a bureaucratic nature rather due to the bird flu, the panic and diversion of resources occasioned by the bird flu epidemic is at least partly to blame for the import permit slowdown.

Meanwhile, a specific vaccine for the new strain of bird flu is under development but as yet unavailable. The World Health Organization recommends that countries begin vaccination campaigns with the Tamiflu vaccine, which was developed for other strains of bird flu and is partly effective against this one. But by the time the Panamanian authorities became concerned --- really, not with any undue delay --- it was discovered that the United States and the United Kingdom had bought nearly the entire world supply of this medication and there was a huge backlog of orders for new production. The Ministry of Health then put in a $1.4 million order with the Roche pharmaceutical company for 80,000 doses of Tamiflu vaccine.

It is estimated that some 50,000 Panamanians, generally the young, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, are at special risk if the bird flu comes here, and the nation's health authorities are working on a strategy to ensure its proper distribution to the high-risk rather than the panicky rich. The profiles of those who will be advised to get vaccinated are children under two, adults over 60 and people with diseases or taking medications that weaken their immune systems.

In the agricultural health field, Panama's authorities put out a call for special budget appropriations to hire more inspectors to visit the nation's poultry farms and more do more thorough quarantine checks at our ports of entry, warned that if there is any doubt about the provenance or paperwork of any imported poultry it will be seized and burned, and mulled suggestions that caged chickens be deployed in areas where migrating birds congregate, so as to provide an early warning of bird flu coming to this country in wild birds. In another development Taiwan's government and the Taiwanese owners of the Panamanian-registered ship Da-Ji, which had transported a cargo of chickens that were thought to be infected and thus destroyed, were questioned by Panamanian authorities about any plans to call in Panama and about what measures may have been taken to disinfect the vessel.

In the present situation (as in the case of mad cow infections in North America) it's hard to see a clear boundary between a pretext for economic protectionism and legitimate concern about agricultural plagues. Wherever that line runs, these government measures have so far enjoyed the support of Panama's poultry producers. However, we have yet to see agricultural inspectors showing up with increased frequency at the nation's chicken farms and issuing orders to destroy entire flocks and if we do see those things then attitudes could change.

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