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I’m sure that most of the world has seen the Thai authorities eating chickens, shown again and again on television, to prove that other people should not be afraid, eating chicken is still safe and other countries should continue importing their poultry food products. It’s easy and obvious to know why they were doing that. For economic profit.The W.H.O. has also noted the fact that government authorities often undertake aggressive emergency control measures as soon as an outbreak is detected!
So is eating fowl dangerous and risks getting the H5N1 into your body? The answer is NO. The virus is killed by heat (56 Celcius degrees in 3 hours or 60 Celcius degrees in 30 mins). So if you eat the cooked chickens, you’ll be fine. That’s why Thai authorities ate chickens publicly. The risks belong to the ones who cook, the ones in physical contact with the chickens or their droppings when they were not yet cooked.The virus can survive at cool temperatures, in contaminated manure for at least three months. In water, the virus can survive up to 4 days at 22 Celcius degrees and more than 30 days at 0 Celcius degree. For the highly pathogenic form, studies have shown that a single gram of contaminated manure can contain enough virus to infect 1 million birds. (W.H.O. source) I myself ate chicken,on 13th of February 2004 (one day before Valentine’s Day so i remember it exactly), at a friend’s house, with a bit of fear of course. My friend, also a pharmacy classmate of mine, unflinchingly took chicken for me and said “Don’t worry, my aunt raised it, it didn’t have the flu.” When talking to her family at the dinner, i was surprised that the mother, who cooked, surely knew that she could face risks if the chicken really had the flu(!). Thanks God I’m still alive!
To help control this outbreak please refuse to eat any poultry products and thereby remove any risk to yourself or those who prepare the foodstuffs. If no-one eats poultry then no-one risks catching the H5N1 virus.
So what should we do?
The Government authorities have a big responsibility to expedite the control in the very first days the outbreak is detected. As you are reading this, we are no longer in the first days, and what we have to do is for the present situation as well as the future, both near and distant future, especially when the stop sign of this is still somewhere out of our sight. Remember that Mexico took 3 years to completely control a similar epidemic.
There are still people dying of A.I and that’s why the propagation and appeal should continue to be expanded. If your family or relatives are raising poultry, talk to them first. Tell them about the danger of A.I and the correct way to take care.
At the moment I think we can’t ask farmers to kill all their healthy poultry to make sure that we are safe from H5N1. The Vietnamese government recently have strict programs to protect the poultry breed. That’s what we all should do, but on a vast scale and as soon as possible. In seriously infected areas, we need to pay attention to the way we cull and to do it responsibly and carefully. I also think this is the right time such countries troubled by A.I get help from friends all over the world, both the knowledge and financial aid.
In other countries where there have been no confirmed or discovered cases of infection by H5N1 yet in either poultry or humans,care is also necessary because, wild birds which are considered a dangerous vector of A.I are not checked at the airports!
As a matter of fact, what we are doing is very important because the latest news shows that even domestic cats and leopards are able to get H5N1 and we have actual cases in Thailand. What will happen if other creatures are susceptible too ???
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Pinkie
"If you can dream - and not make dreams your master
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim"
* If - Rudyard Kipling *
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Comments
Thanks Hong-Anh Nguyen | Mar 3rd, 2004
Thanks jakeTsnake a lot for helping me with the English.
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