Bird flu could hobble Africa’s AIDS fight

“We are on very thin ice here,” said Piot in an inspection mission in Dar esSalaam.

“AIDS has made a mess of Africa’s health care systems, and none of the factors that created the AIDS disaster have gone away. But with bird flu, we could be looking at things getting worse in a matter of months, not decades.”

Cases of H5N1 have been confirmed on four farms in thenorthern Nigerian states of Kano and Kaduna and in the central state of Plateau. There have been suspected outbreaks in at five other states in the centre or North.

No human bird flu case has been found in Africa so far. Butdetecting such a case will be difficult because mortality rates are high from other diseases and health services are almost non-existent in rural areas, where people are often buried without a medical check.

Officials are now increasingly worried the likelihood of human transmission could rise if the virus spreads to other countries in the region—many already suffering from widespread malnutrition, poverty and the effects of the world’s worst HIV/AIDS pandemic.

“Africa is fragile, and this could really overburden its systems,” Piot said.

“We have not seen a human outbreak yet. But if we do, the resources are going to have to come from somewhere. That is a real concern for everybody involved in development.”

Piot said scientists were studying the possible interactionof bird flu and HIV, the virus which causes AIDS and which has already infected some 26 million people in sub-Saharan Africa.

While some theorise that those whose immune systems are weakened by HIV might die faster in a bird flu outbreak, others say that because bird flu overstimulates the immune response, HIV-positive people might not die themselves but instead become “supercarriers” that spread the virus. —Reuters