Limbe: Bird flu scare triggers brisk chicken business

The news of an outbreak of bird flu has triggered off massive sales of table birds in Limbe in Fako Division despite health risks.

On Friday, June 3, Rachel Waki sold 62 fowls at the Limbe New Market. Waki aka Mamarash and Sons Enterprise told The Post that despite the bird flu scare they struggled to sell off all their stock of fowls. Poultry dealers from neighbouring Mutengene in Tiko Sub-division could be seen going back home with empty baskets.

Waki said, “Some of the buyers actually expressed fear of bird flu but we have also been trying to convince them that the disease is only in Yaounde and nowhere else.” Dr. Lucas Chong, another poultry dealer who had sold most of all his birds also sounded positive about the business.

“The market today has been a little better than last week. Though the fowl business has weakened a bit, people are still buying,” Dr. Chong said. When The Post asked Dr. Chong if bird flu had actually broken out, he said, “We cannot know because we are not technicians.”

He said that some officials from the Divisional Delegation of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industry from Fako had passed by last week and told them not to be scared because the Government was doing everything to stem the spread of the disease.

The Divisional Delegate of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industry, Dr. Rene Besong Besong, also said there was no need for the public to be scared. “We have been keeping a close observation of the situation in the Division to ensure that everything is in order,” he said.

Bird flu or avian influenza is a viral disease that is known to also infect humans who come in contact with a sick bird or happens to eat the flesh of an undercooked one.

The disease has several strains and the H5N1 is the most common and most lethal. This strain was first discovered in Hong Kong in 1997. Cough, diarrhea, difficulty in breathing, high fever, headache, runny nose, malaise, sore throat are said to be some of the common symptoms of the disease in humans. The disease is said to leave the birds to humans through contact by humans of the bird’s nasal secretions, mouth and eye droplets and faeces.

In order to avoid being infected, people are advised to cook bird or fowls and their eggs pretty well to some 165 degrees centigrade before eating as such intense heat is capable of destroying the virus.