I was in Delhi over the weekend on work and I was able to catch up on some Sunday birding with Delhibird members. Just thought of sharing my experience with them, this being my first birding outing in Delhi. Due thanks to Gopi Sundar, Anshu, KB Singh and a diverse group of members from Delhibird well represented in age, gender and profession!
A particularly hot Sunday morning, the stench of the Yamuna and the recent disquiet from yesterday's tragic blasts did not deter the Sunday outing of Delhibird to Okhla Bird Sanctuary, geographically in Uttar Pradesh, but only about half hour drive from the national capital.
A chance meeting with Gopi Sundar who studies Sarus Cranes and a co-incidental phone call from Anshu of Delhibirds regarding the outing made it possible for me to join the group to Okhla. We left Delhi at 5.40 AM and reached Okhla at 6 AM. The twitching of the Lesser Whitethroat and the ammoniacal odours of the Yamuna welcomed us (For those who think I am overstenching the Yamuna, see quote of the day below). We parked within Okhla and walked down the trail with agricultural fields on one side and dry marsh land with tall grass on the other with the 'pie' of male bushchats every few metres apart. A lone Common Babbler on the trail ahead excited me quite a bit, we southerners not having this 'common' cousin of our babblers.
We reached the end of the trail overlooks the Yamuna waters with tall grass, a few settlements and stray cattle separating us from the water. Somebody pointed out a large bird perched at a distance and the day started. Even as the scope was being set up, several binocs went up and a tentative diagnosis of a hepatic female cuckoo was announced. The barring on the upper tail, its
large size and the very fine nature of the barring on the underparts was bringing Eurasian Cuckoo in my mind. The scope brought some clarity - the yellowish bill and the plumage indicated that it was a juvenile. The throat had relatively lesser streaking and the underparts were also quite dark with the fine barring. With a lingering doubt in everyone's mind, we settled for juv. Greybellied Cuckoo. A few record shots from the photgrapher friends will settle the id soon perhaps.
A courageous group of delhibirders turned waders and waded through some water, vegetation and whatnot to reach the water. They were rewarded with Blacktailed Godwits, Ruffs and several other waterbirds. Just then, we all had seen a female Marsh Harrier and even as I was about to mention Migrantwatch, KB Singh informed me that he would be logging it into MW
today! The other group which stayed put were witness to an Rufousbacked Shrikes, an oriole in flight, red munias and black drongos. On the other bank, meanwhile were over a hundred terns, mostly whiskered with some river terns fishing. As we returned, Gopi scoped a few Spotted Owlets roosting in a Banyan tree nearby. A Greater Spotted Eagle and a Pariah kite circling
together as we walked back was another highlight of the morning.
It was a great opportunity to meet some birders from Delhi. It's amazing how many of them have heard so much about BR Hills. The recent photographs from BR Hills had made it even more of a top destination for many of them. Between the harriers and the munias, the conversation moved from Migrantwatch to the top-ten photographers announced by Kolkatabirds and slowly strayed away to idlis and dosas, and at some point, we all dispersed
to Sagar restaurant in Noida, where I gulped down the most expensive idlis of my life. As all breakfast convos go, this one too was unmatched in its width of topics - conservation policy, judiciary, ethics, choice of 'spirits' and what not!
A morning well spent with delhibird members and I look forward to birding again with them whenever I visit Delhi.
Quote of the day (Heard over breakfast :)
"I saw a Small Blue Kingfisher once. It dived into the Yamuna.....it then turned Pied"
List of birds seen
1) Grey Francolin - Francolinus pondicerianus
2) Lesser Whistling Duck - Dendrocygna javanica
3) Spotbilled Duck - Anas poecilorhyncha - Hundreds!
4) Northern Shoveler - A. clypeata - 2 females among the spotbilled ducks
5) Green Bee-eater - Merops orientalis
6) Juv. Cuckoo - Possibly Greybellied?
7) Greater Coucal - Centropus sinensis
8) Roseringed Parakeet - Psittacula kramerii
9) Spotted Owlet - Athene brama
10) Laughing Dove - Streptopelia senegalensis
11) Eurasian Collored Dove - Streptopelia decaocto
12) Yellowfooted Green Pigeon - Treron phoenicoptera 3 different flocks of
approx 12-15 pigeons
13) Whitebreasted Waterhen - Amaurornis phoenicurus - heard only
14) Purple Moorhen - Porphyrio porphyrio
15) Ruff - Philomachus pugnax - 4 in flight
16) River Tern - Sterna aurantia
17) Whiskered Tern - Chlidonias hybridus
18) Pariah Kite - Milvus migrans
19) Marsh Harrier - Circus a. aeruginosus
20) Greater Spotted Eagle - Aquila clanga
21) Little Cormorant - Phalacrocorax niger
22) Little Egret - Egretta garzetta
23) Cattle Egret - Bubulcus ibis
24) Grey Heron - Ardea cinerea
25) Purple Heron - Ardea purpurea
26) Night Heron - Nycticorax nycticorax
27) Painted Stork - Mycteria leucocephala
28) Rufousbacked Shrike - Lanius schach
29) Rufous Treepie - Dendrocitta vagabunda
30) House Crow - Corvus splendens
31) Eurasian Golden Oriole - Oriolus oriolus - seen in flight
32) Black Drongo - Dicrurus macrocercus
33) Whirring call of Common Iora?? Aegithina tiphia - Not confirmed
34) Redvented Bulbul - Pycnonotus cafer - outnumbered its whiskered cousin
35) Redwhiskered Bulbul - P. jocosus
36) Ashy Prinia - Prinia socialis
37) Lesser Whitethroat - Sylvia curruca
38) Tailorbird - Orthotomus sutorius
39) Common Babbler - Turdoides caudatus
40) Purple Sunbird - Nectarinia asiatica
41) Red Munia - Amandava amandava
42) Silverbill - Lonchura malabarica
43) Scalybreasted Munia - L. punctulata
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Healthy forests and healthy people – A problem of First among equals
Aphu was a young man in his twenties when he passed away. In the hinterland of India's largest tiger reserve, few people keep track of their age, for nobody here registers them for social welfare, nor do they have a doctor who asks them their age to fill up a column on a case sheet. Aphu's home was in Gandhigram, a remote tribal village in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in North-east India, where he lived a little more than 20 years. His village is surrounded on one side by one of India's largest tiger reserves, Namdapha Tiger Reserve, and on the other are vast stretches of Myanmar's Hukawng Valley Tiger Reserve, perhaps the world's largest protected area spanning close to 6000 square kilometers.
Late last year, Aphu died. A healthy young man, he was among the people hired to carry luggage and supplies for a group of people. We were visiting the village to see how we could address their health care needs. Cystic fibrosis did not dry up his lungs. Neither was it any of those eponymous autosomal diseases that strike the young, of which we learn so much in medical school. These diseases were very interesting, with articles about them in journals describing correlations to genes with numbers like the latest version of MS Windows. They all had their "Disability adjusted Life Years"(DALYs) that were screaming out their importance to be taken up in any of the new programs that the State might decide to launch. But, these rare and publishable afflictions were not among those that Aphu was ever afflicted with. He died, quite simply, of malaria. Quite ironic, that a country with nuclear power still has anaemic mothers and malaria deaths!
I have been to Aphu's village a few times with the wildlife scientists who work here. His village happens to be surrounded by one of the northernmost primary rainforests in the world. The place teems with biodiversity and the forests of Arunachal Pradesh have witnessed descriptions of a new species of bird and even a new primate, all in the past few years. Although, it is the tiger that has given this area its protected status, it is not for the tiger that this national park and many of the forests in Arunachal Pradesh are known. They are famous for their rich biodiversity including several endemic insects, butterflies, birds and plants. Such rainforests play a central role in wildlife conservation and climate change. However, climate change and global warming are distant issues for the Lisu and other tribal people living in and around these forests. Strangely, tigers aren’t.
In India today, there is a public debate on tiger deaths. Tigers and tribal people are being pitted against each other in conferences and in hallowed policy-making chambers. Co-existence of tigers and tribals is being questioned. In an environment where health care is financed literally out of people's pockets, a tiger's fate and people's health can get intertwined easily. And hunting becomes a means of averting any unplanned and sudden catastrophic expenditure. It is invariably health costs that crop up in the category of unforeseen expenses. With poor access to primary health care or even to community health workers, people in such remote regions often find that hunting can finance their long journeys to towns. And it does not help matters that private providers with expensive secondary level care and irrational practices become the first line health providers for these people. The Lisus travel through about 150 km of thick forests interspersed with rivers often in spate, to reach 'civilization'. From here, they take a 6 hour bus journey to reach a town where they invariably see a private provider. Roads, understandably are a bigger concern than chloroquine.
I work in an NGO in South India, with another indigenous tribal people, called the Soligas. The forests have shrunken around the Soligas, leaving a 540 sq. km area, still remaining, due to its legal protection by the State. The Soligas were semi-nomadic people, until they were forced to settle due in part to the shrinking forests and the legal protection accorded to their forests. They couldn't hunt anymore. However, a doctor who settled in these hills 25 years ago, began to provide health care to them. He went further to education and livelihood, as just providing health care was helping their health! This NGO today provides health care, education and livelihood to these tribal people. Today, the elderly Soligas talk about how climate has changed. They do not question it and do not need evidence. They know it and also see how their forests are getting choked from the outside.
These two glaring examples from South India and Arunachal Pradesh in North-east India typify the problems faced by people living in and around forests in India. However, the key is in access to basic health care and livelihoods. Wildlife scientists today see this connection between people's basic needs and their conservation ethic. In fact, it was a group of wildlife biologists that started a community health care program and an education initiative among the Lisus. I went there to train a group of tribal youth in basic health care. Among other things, I wanted these youth to be able to identify and institute treatment against malaria. It was indeed a satisfying experience for me, to see how wildlife biologists had looked beyond their paradigm of biodiversity conservation, and had looked for solutions outside ‘their box’. We, in health care, sadly are yet to make this connection. A glance at our curricula reveals the level of medicalisation that we undergo. A glance at our policy shows how fragmented and restricted it is.
Shrinking forests are an important reason for climate change, and so are empty forests; forests devoid of their biodiversity. While hunting empties forests in some places, it is firewood needs and fires in other places. It is after all people, who are to blame for this. People living in and around forest areas depend on them for their livelihood and daily needs. And when there are financial pressures for any of their needs, they turn to their resources - forests. Thus, they find themselves being the villains accelerating deforestation and emptying the forests. Isn’t this the same thing that our forefathers did, that we find ourselves in this position today? Can we blame them for being late in destroying their forests, just because, we thought of legal protection for it now, and we have climate change now! As population pressures and urbanization increase in India, rural and tribal India face a different problem; one of access - both physical and financial. It is time for health planners to consider the special needs and contextual factors affecting tribal
people and those living or affected by forests. It would be presumptuous to imagine that national programs for any of the diseases will change the situation with these people. Lisus or Soligas and for that matter any individual is not asking for malaria control programs or early cancer detection programs. They are asking for plain health care - financial and physical access to a person who can cure them of their illness and can help them live a healthier life. A malaria program for them is even lower in priority than a road or a source of livelihood, simply because, they have accepted malaria deaths as their destiny. It is perhaps time to think beyond programs and address health as a need in itself rather than health as a consequence of our programs.
Aphu died of malaria in his early 20s only because he was born in a place where climate change and the biodiversity mattered more than his life. In many areas the world over, where man-wildlife conflicts occur, the situation is similar. How are we going to prioritize between biodiversity conservation and people's needs? Are our politicians and policy-makers even seeing this problem of 'First among equals’? The global health research agenda needs to gear up to answer these difficult questions; questions that matter to people dying of malaria in this age, when in many countries, research is addressing carpal tunnel syndrome.
Late last year, Aphu died. A healthy young man, he was among the people hired to carry luggage and supplies for a group of people. We were visiting the village to see how we could address their health care needs. Cystic fibrosis did not dry up his lungs. Neither was it any of those eponymous autosomal diseases that strike the young, of which we learn so much in medical school. These diseases were very interesting, with articles about them in journals describing correlations to genes with numbers like the latest version of MS Windows. They all had their "Disability adjusted Life Years"(DALYs) that were screaming out their importance to be taken up in any of the new programs that the State might decide to launch. But, these rare and publishable afflictions were not among those that Aphu was ever afflicted with. He died, quite simply, of malaria. Quite ironic, that a country with nuclear power still has anaemic mothers and malaria deaths!
I have been to Aphu's village a few times with the wildlife scientists who work here. His village happens to be surrounded by one of the northernmost primary rainforests in the world. The place teems with biodiversity and the forests of Arunachal Pradesh have witnessed descriptions of a new species of bird and even a new primate, all in the past few years. Although, it is the tiger that has given this area its protected status, it is not for the tiger that this national park and many of the forests in Arunachal Pradesh are known. They are famous for their rich biodiversity including several endemic insects, butterflies, birds and plants. Such rainforests play a central role in wildlife conservation and climate change. However, climate change and global warming are distant issues for the Lisu and other tribal people living in and around these forests. Strangely, tigers aren’t.
In India today, there is a public debate on tiger deaths. Tigers and tribal people are being pitted against each other in conferences and in hallowed policy-making chambers. Co-existence of tigers and tribals is being questioned. In an environment where health care is financed literally out of people's pockets, a tiger's fate and people's health can get intertwined easily. And hunting becomes a means of averting any unplanned and sudden catastrophic expenditure. It is invariably health costs that crop up in the category of unforeseen expenses. With poor access to primary health care or even to community health workers, people in such remote regions often find that hunting can finance their long journeys to towns. And it does not help matters that private providers with expensive secondary level care and irrational practices become the first line health providers for these people. The Lisus travel through about 150 km of thick forests interspersed with rivers often in spate, to reach 'civilization'. From here, they take a 6 hour bus journey to reach a town where they invariably see a private provider. Roads, understandably are a bigger concern than chloroquine.
I work in an NGO in South India, with another indigenous tribal people, called the Soligas. The forests have shrunken around the Soligas, leaving a 540 sq. km area, still remaining, due to its legal protection by the State. The Soligas were semi-nomadic people, until they were forced to settle due in part to the shrinking forests and the legal protection accorded to their forests. They couldn't hunt anymore. However, a doctor who settled in these hills 25 years ago, began to provide health care to them. He went further to education and livelihood, as just providing health care was helping their health! This NGO today provides health care, education and livelihood to these tribal people. Today, the elderly Soligas talk about how climate has changed. They do not question it and do not need evidence. They know it and also see how their forests are getting choked from the outside.
These two glaring examples from South India and Arunachal Pradesh in North-east India typify the problems faced by people living in and around forests in India. However, the key is in access to basic health care and livelihoods. Wildlife scientists today see this connection between people's basic needs and their conservation ethic. In fact, it was a group of wildlife biologists that started a community health care program and an education initiative among the Lisus. I went there to train a group of tribal youth in basic health care. Among other things, I wanted these youth to be able to identify and institute treatment against malaria. It was indeed a satisfying experience for me, to see how wildlife biologists had looked beyond their paradigm of biodiversity conservation, and had looked for solutions outside ‘their box’. We, in health care, sadly are yet to make this connection. A glance at our curricula reveals the level of medicalisation that we undergo. A glance at our policy shows how fragmented and restricted it is.
Shrinking forests are an important reason for climate change, and so are empty forests; forests devoid of their biodiversity. While hunting empties forests in some places, it is firewood needs and fires in other places. It is after all people, who are to blame for this. People living in and around forest areas depend on them for their livelihood and daily needs. And when there are financial pressures for any of their needs, they turn to their resources - forests. Thus, they find themselves being the villains accelerating deforestation and emptying the forests. Isn’t this the same thing that our forefathers did, that we find ourselves in this position today? Can we blame them for being late in destroying their forests, just because, we thought of legal protection for it now, and we have climate change now! As population pressures and urbanization increase in India, rural and tribal India face a different problem; one of access - both physical and financial. It is time for health planners to consider the special needs and contextual factors affecting tribal
people and those living or affected by forests. It would be presumptuous to imagine that national programs for any of the diseases will change the situation with these people. Lisus or Soligas and for that matter any individual is not asking for malaria control programs or early cancer detection programs. They are asking for plain health care - financial and physical access to a person who can cure them of their illness and can help them live a healthier life. A malaria program for them is even lower in priority than a road or a source of livelihood, simply because, they have accepted malaria deaths as their destiny. It is perhaps time to think beyond programs and address health as a need in itself rather than health as a consequence of our programs.
Aphu died of malaria in his early 20s only because he was born in a place where climate change and the biodiversity mattered more than his life. In many areas the world over, where man-wildlife conflicts occur, the situation is similar. How are we going to prioritize between biodiversity conservation and people's needs? Are our politicians and policy-makers even seeing this problem of 'First among equals’? The global health research agenda needs to gear up to answer these difficult questions; questions that matter to people dying of malaria in this age, when in many countries, research is addressing carpal tunnel syndrome.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Bird flu - Birds edition
It's an interesting puzzle, this bird flu. On one side, while birdwatchers are all disturbed about even the suggestion of wild bird culling as a control measure to prevent spread of bird flu by migratory birds, on the other hand, for the public health professionals, it is just among various available 'vector-control' measure.....kinda like control mosquitoes to prevent malaria. Who would listen if for whatever reason, 'mosquito-rights' activists want to prevent any such measure!!
Anyways, neither are there any mosquito-rights activists, nor are things as simple as taking a leaf from malaria vector control and applying it in bird flu. Understandably, things are much more complex than that. In two posts to two different groups, I have shared my opinions with both interest groups - birdwatchers and public health professionals.......here is the birds edition, and soon to come the public health edition.
Just a few comments of mine especially in view of several discussions that I have been witness to in course of my study here. I just share below some of my thoughts for the general reader and may be writing on topics way out of the purview of our discussion group in hope that many birdwatchers would be interested in topics related to bird flu - an interesting situation that calls for a lot of inter-disciplinary work and understanding of concepts in biology, epidemiology, public health and veterinary science.
Sudheendra's mail and Krishna's and Deepa's subsequent replies about Avian flu bring up many issues on avian flu that are hardly being considered. Sudheendra rightly points out the serious economic consequences of mass culling being undertaken in response to 'declared' cases of the flu in Orissa and Bengal. Many of the people involved here are small poultry owners for whom livelihood is a much more proximate concern than an unheard 'flu'.
Flu is definitely not something to be taken lightly. As Krishna points out, if the virus does 'cross-over' to humans, the chances are only among the animal handlers, and that is exactly where the public health authorities must focus. It is also to be noted that until recently bird-human infection was not yet reported and it was only spreading among birds. But, the worldwide panic is because IF there is such a mutation that enables the flu to spread among people, it could take up the pandemic proportions that the world has seen before.
The thing about flu is that it is clinically....well...so insignificant! Fever, feeling of weakness, body pain, red eyes are symptoms that dont get reported. MOre so in the health system landscape that India has with a zillion private clinics, quacks, traditional healers and disgruntled and frustrated public health system. The reports we are getting now are the ones we could detect.
Flu viruses have the uncanny ability of sweeping across the world bringing about widespread deaths and then, suddenly disappearing. This has happened many times before. The classical example quoted is that of the Swine Flu epidemic in the US which is supposed to have killed over 20 million people over 4 months just in the US! Of course, the pandemic was worldwide, but you
can get numbers only for the US, UK and some other countries which did have such systems. Over 200,000 people are supposed to have died in this pandemic in UK. It took more lives than in the First world war. And then, suddenly Swine Flu vanished into thin air. Poof! I say this to emphasize the point that flu is a very real danger. The reason why it flares up so suddenly is
attributed to mutations.
Influenza is caused by a virus which are comparable to "a bad xerox machine inside a protein cover", the xerox machine in this case referring to its genetic material. I call it bad because it lacks a particular 'proof-reading' mechanism that other living things have and hence there are
no 'errors' when for example our own skin cells multiply in a healing wound. If our cells did not have a good way of keeping our genetic material intact during division, then we would all be doomed! But, for the virus this is quite an advantage, and hence through mechanisms called drifts and shifts, the virus keeps changing its protein clothing, which is what enables our immune system to identify them. So, how does the human immune system grapple with a virus that keeps changing its appearance......It cant!...which is why, HIV and many other such viruses pose a great threat for vaccines. We would have to keep making vaccines for every new dominant appearance (strain) of the virus. IN simple language what I spoke about here is recognized as Genetic drifts and Genetic shifts. Drifts are minor changes occuring in the protein coat of the virus that leads to failure of vaccines and sometimes, major catastrophes, such as the Spanish Influenza Pandemic in the spring of 1918 which is supposed to have killed anywhwere between 40-100 million people! Get ready for this one - The Spanish Flu strain was supposed to have been an avian virus that underwent a shift!
Coming back to avian flu, the present strain finds it very difficult to get transmitted from human to human. Still, over 300 worldwide deaths that have been reported today are mostly bird-human transmissions with a few rare 'within family' transmissions reported mostly again, within the family of the animal/poultry handlers. The virus strain causing the flu is called H5N1
which is the standard name for naming influenza viruses. H stands for one of the surface proteins on the virus that enables entry into cells, and N stands for an enzyme that enables the new virus particles to break out of the dying cell. Now, 4 sub-types of the avian flu virus are recognized. All
of them are deadly to birds, and can cause disease and death among humans. It is important to remember here that the virus presently is an AVIAN FLU virus and is being incidentally passed on to humans because of the way in which we have organized our poultry system! Wild birds, especially waterfowl are natural carriers of the virus, although, they are not as susceptible to
the disease as are the domestic birds. For eg. Russian vets are supposed to have drawn over 4000 samples of blood in Siberia with around 50 showing antibodies, which indicates active infection or past infection.
It is quite evident that migrant birds can carry these strains. But, it is important to note the following:
1) Birds carry several kinds of flu viruses and they have been doing so for zillions of years.
2) Wild birds themselves pose NO THREAT to any person directly. The only way is for them to pass on their infection to poultry birds, where the flu could spread like wildfire.
What we need to focus on is the situation within our poultry industry, handling of dead birds and a surveillance system that reports bird deaths in poultry houses. Moreover, awareness on this for animal handlers is extremely important. I find it quite ridiculous that may international bodies are calling for culling of wild birds. Such measures are not only scientifically untenable, they are also quite a schoolboy solution, I must say....a bit like trying to kill all mosquitoes to eradicate malaria!
What we must concentrate on is surveillance systems, awareness on animal handling and vaccine research. Prototypes of the vaccines are being reported. If the virus does acquire mutations that enable human-human transmission, it could definitely be catastrophic, else, it could just go away into the thin air like a million other strains of flu that we in the third world could never ever find document, let alone naming them after their surface proteins. India must've seen so many other previous outbreaks that were never documented.
Just a final word, Avian Flu is a disease that presents a lot of research opportunities. There could be many PhDs created. It creates good business opportunities, many patents, awards, paper presentations, conferences and well, sales of the vaccine will rake in millions.......it's not the same
situation for diseases like Malaria, Kala-azar, Tuberculosis etc. which continue to kill millions of people across millennia....these are the neglected diseases that no one ever bothers about. There are no new vaccines being tried, and no new drug being developed for these diseases....there is
simply no 'market'!!! An irony that avian flu gets so much attention.
Wonder how many of you got this far into my long rant at the end of a busy week here in cold, birdless Antwerp....most of the birds around my house are around where most of you are sitting. Who knows, maybe some of them carried the flu!!! I started the mail saying "...just a few comments"......
Some references for those who are interested:
Johnson, NP; Mueller, J (2002 Spring). "Updating the accounts: global
mortality of the 1918-1920 "Spanish" influenza pandemic.
J. D. Earn, J. Dushoff, S. A. Levin (2002). "Ecology and Evolution of the
Flu". *Trends in Ecology and Evolution* 17: 334-340.
Bill Bryson (2003) A Short History of Nearly Everything. pp. 386-388
Anyways, neither are there any mosquito-rights activists, nor are things as simple as taking a leaf from malaria vector control and applying it in bird flu. Understandably, things are much more complex than that. In two posts to two different groups, I have shared my opinions with both interest groups - birdwatchers and public health professionals.......here is the birds edition, and soon to come the public health edition.
Just a few comments of mine especially in view of several discussions that I have been witness to in course of my study here. I just share below some of my thoughts for the general reader and may be writing on topics way out of the purview of our discussion group in hope that many birdwatchers would be interested in topics related to bird flu - an interesting situation that calls for a lot of inter-disciplinary work and understanding of concepts in biology, epidemiology, public health and veterinary science.
Sudheendra's mail and Krishna's and Deepa's subsequent replies about Avian flu bring up many issues on avian flu that are hardly being considered. Sudheendra rightly points out the serious economic consequences of mass culling being undertaken in response to 'declared' cases of the flu in Orissa and Bengal. Many of the people involved here are small poultry owners for whom livelihood is a much more proximate concern than an unheard 'flu'.
Flu is definitely not something to be taken lightly. As Krishna points out, if the virus does 'cross-over' to humans, the chances are only among the animal handlers, and that is exactly where the public health authorities must focus. It is also to be noted that until recently bird-human infection was not yet reported and it was only spreading among birds. But, the worldwide panic is because IF there is such a mutation that enables the flu to spread among people, it could take up the pandemic proportions that the world has seen before.
The thing about flu is that it is clinically....well...so insignificant! Fever, feeling of weakness, body pain, red eyes are symptoms that dont get reported. MOre so in the health system landscape that India has with a zillion private clinics, quacks, traditional healers and disgruntled and frustrated public health system. The reports we are getting now are the ones we could detect.
Flu viruses have the uncanny ability of sweeping across the world bringing about widespread deaths and then, suddenly disappearing. This has happened many times before. The classical example quoted is that of the Swine Flu epidemic in the US which is supposed to have killed over 20 million people over 4 months just in the US! Of course, the pandemic was worldwide, but you
can get numbers only for the US, UK and some other countries which did have such systems. Over 200,000 people are supposed to have died in this pandemic in UK. It took more lives than in the First world war. And then, suddenly Swine Flu vanished into thin air. Poof! I say this to emphasize the point that flu is a very real danger. The reason why it flares up so suddenly is
attributed to mutations.
Influenza is caused by a virus which are comparable to "a bad xerox machine inside a protein cover", the xerox machine in this case referring to its genetic material. I call it bad because it lacks a particular 'proof-reading' mechanism that other living things have and hence there are
no 'errors' when for example our own skin cells multiply in a healing wound. If our cells did not have a good way of keeping our genetic material intact during division, then we would all be doomed! But, for the virus this is quite an advantage, and hence through mechanisms called drifts and shifts, the virus keeps changing its protein clothing, which is what enables our immune system to identify them. So, how does the human immune system grapple with a virus that keeps changing its appearance......It cant!...which is why, HIV and many other such viruses pose a great threat for vaccines. We would have to keep making vaccines for every new dominant appearance (strain) of the virus. IN simple language what I spoke about here is recognized as Genetic drifts and Genetic shifts. Drifts are minor changes occuring in the protein coat of the virus that leads to failure of vaccines and sometimes, major catastrophes, such as the Spanish Influenza Pandemic in the spring of 1918 which is supposed to have killed anywhwere between 40-100 million people! Get ready for this one - The Spanish Flu strain was supposed to have been an avian virus that underwent a shift!
Coming back to avian flu, the present strain finds it very difficult to get transmitted from human to human. Still, over 300 worldwide deaths that have been reported today are mostly bird-human transmissions with a few rare 'within family' transmissions reported mostly again, within the family of the animal/poultry handlers. The virus strain causing the flu is called H5N1
which is the standard name for naming influenza viruses. H stands for one of the surface proteins on the virus that enables entry into cells, and N stands for an enzyme that enables the new virus particles to break out of the dying cell. Now, 4 sub-types of the avian flu virus are recognized. All
of them are deadly to birds, and can cause disease and death among humans. It is important to remember here that the virus presently is an AVIAN FLU virus and is being incidentally passed on to humans because of the way in which we have organized our poultry system! Wild birds, especially waterfowl are natural carriers of the virus, although, they are not as susceptible to
the disease as are the domestic birds. For eg. Russian vets are supposed to have drawn over 4000 samples of blood in Siberia with around 50 showing antibodies, which indicates active infection or past infection.
It is quite evident that migrant birds can carry these strains. But, it is important to note the following:
1) Birds carry several kinds of flu viruses and they have been doing so for zillions of years.
2) Wild birds themselves pose NO THREAT to any person directly. The only way is for them to pass on their infection to poultry birds, where the flu could spread like wildfire.
What we need to focus on is the situation within our poultry industry, handling of dead birds and a surveillance system that reports bird deaths in poultry houses. Moreover, awareness on this for animal handlers is extremely important. I find it quite ridiculous that may international bodies are calling for culling of wild birds. Such measures are not only scientifically untenable, they are also quite a schoolboy solution, I must say....a bit like trying to kill all mosquitoes to eradicate malaria!
What we must concentrate on is surveillance systems, awareness on animal handling and vaccine research. Prototypes of the vaccines are being reported. If the virus does acquire mutations that enable human-human transmission, it could definitely be catastrophic, else, it could just go away into the thin air like a million other strains of flu that we in the third world could never ever find document, let alone naming them after their surface proteins. India must've seen so many other previous outbreaks that were never documented.
Just a final word, Avian Flu is a disease that presents a lot of research opportunities. There could be many PhDs created. It creates good business opportunities, many patents, awards, paper presentations, conferences and well, sales of the vaccine will rake in millions.......it's not the same
situation for diseases like Malaria, Kala-azar, Tuberculosis etc. which continue to kill millions of people across millennia....these are the neglected diseases that no one ever bothers about. There are no new vaccines being tried, and no new drug being developed for these diseases....there is
simply no 'market'!!! An irony that avian flu gets so much attention.
Wonder how many of you got this far into my long rant at the end of a busy week here in cold, birdless Antwerp....most of the birds around my house are around where most of you are sitting. Who knows, maybe some of them carried the flu!!! I started the mail saying "...just a few comments"......
Some references for those who are interested:
Johnson, NP; Mueller, J (2002 Spring). "Updating the accounts: global
mortality of the 1918-1920 "Spanish" influenza pandemic.
J. D. Earn, J. Dushoff, S. A. Levin (2002). "Ecology and Evolution of the
Flu". *Trends in Ecology and Evolution* 17: 334-340.
Bill Bryson (2003) A Short History of Nearly Everything. pp. 386-388
Monday, January 14, 2008
BR Hills - My home away from home....
My friend Sunil, once remarked that nostalgia is a sign of old age, and if that is what I am suffering from, may it be so......As I sit in my ill-lit room in Antwerp, eating microwave heated, yesterday cooked, lemon rice, I think about those wonderful days in the hills.....and my heard dances with BR Hills (No Daffodils there... :)
As you enter the sanctuary, you start with scrub jungle with regular sightings of Baybacked Shrikes and Peafowl. As you then pass the first waterhole on your right, if you dont see 'party dudes' from Mysore listening to Backstreet Boys, you will see sometimes Dholes. If the summer gets real bad, Elephants too, for this is quite a good lake.
As you ascend, you see the towns of Yelandur and nearby villages onyour right from the watchpost, as the road curves to the left. Now theforest slowly turns greener, and trees replace the shrubs. The Laughing Dove turns into the Spotted one. This is where you will see that the trees are all of the same height and one-storeyed almost like a plantation. But, this only indicates the result of 'protection', for this is the area of extension of the sanctuary and most of the trees here came up together once the hills got legal protection.
As you enter the sanctuary, you start with scrub jungle with regular sightings of Baybacked Shrikes and Peafowl. As you then pass the first waterhole on your right, if you dont see 'party dudes' from Mysore listening to Backstreet Boys, you will see sometimes Dholes. If the summer gets real bad, Elephants too, for this is quite a good lake.
As you ascend, you see the towns of Yelandur and nearby villages onyour right from the watchpost, as the road curves to the left. Now theforest slowly turns greener, and trees replace the shrubs. The Laughing Dove turns into the Spotted one. This is where you will see that the trees are all of the same height and one-storeyed almost like a plantation. But, this only indicates the result of 'protection', for this is the area of extension of the sanctuary and most of the trees here came up together once the hills got legal protection.
You continue walking up, and you will definitely see Gaurs if it is fairly late in the day. Most of the days, as I returned from my clinics at the foothills, I could see Garus, and on 'good' days, bears. Monitors are also seen sometimes. As you go up, you reach the Purani area, which is where the 'Purani tiger' frequently hangs around. Curiously, he is sighted more frequently by busloads of uninterested pilgrims, rather than our kinds! This guy can get quite nasty a little later in the year, post-december, when he starts lifting a cattle or two. In fact, one late evening, I saw this guy resting on a rock on a valley across, quite not bothering about us watching him!
You ascend up and you can really feel the air cooling down.....heres' where the Drongos become smaller and shinier...we start seeing the Bronzed Drongo. The first of the Wagtails you start seeing, especially the Grey Wagtail, in the winters, all along the road! In fact, it is quite a pattern...once the Greys arrive, the Whites seem to go downstairs! And so, do the White-bellied Drongos which go further down..
After this of course, is the town of BR Hills with its own charm and beauty! If you continue down the road, as I see you have, the Drongos become racquet-tailed, the minivets turn scarlet and the Pigeons become green, emerald and imperial! I can go on and on..but, gotta stop somewhere, right..so here goes...STOP......hmm.....getting old is fun!
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