The FAO on Friday advocated strengthening control and hygiene measures to prevent the spread and mutation of the H7N9 bird flu virus, which has already killed dozens of people this year in China.
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In total, more than 1,200 people have been affected by the H7N9 virus since the first detection in 2013, the death rate for those affected being around 40%.
The number of recorded cases has increased sharply since December and Chinese authorities reported 79 deaths in January, up from five at the same time in 2016.
According to the FAO, the UN organization for agriculture and food, headquartered in Rome, China and neighboring countries or trading – legally or not – with China must put in place systems detection and reaction.
“It is mandatory to establish targeted surveillance that can detect the disease and clean up farms and markets where infected birds are found, intervening at key stages throughout the poultry chain, from farm to farm. ‘to the plate,’ insisted Dr Vincent Martin, FAO representative in China.
China has already invested heavily in market surveillance since 2013, even though the fact that poultry infected with H7N9 showed few or no symptoms greatly complicated the controls.
In an attempt to contain the epidemic, the live poultry trade has been temporarily suspended in the metropolitan areas of Canton (south) and Changsha (center), as well as in the whole of Zhejiang province (east), had announced in February the new China state agency.
However, new evidence collected in Guangdong province (south-east) indicates that the H7N9 virus has become highly pathogenic for poultry, with a very high mortality rate in 48 hours, which could facilitate detection, notes FAO. .
Given the permanent risks of mutations in the virus, FAO and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) also consider as “essential” a rapid sharing of the results of surveillance and laboratory analyzes of the virus.
With AFP
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