Chicken back on the menu despite bird flu presence

Panic that swept through Cameroon after deadly H5N1 bird flu was confirmed in March has given way to complacency as no human casualties have been reported in the country. “At first I was scared, but when I came to understand the nature of bird flu I started buying chicken again, and now all my family does too,” said Danielle Owona, taking a break haggling over the price of chickens in a bustling poultry market in the capital Yaounde. After 1,000 birds were found dead some 800 km away in northern Cameroon in early March the government launched a major culling programme and started broadcasting warnings on TV and radio that Cameroonians should not eat under-cooked poultry. Consumption of chicken and eggs fell drastically, with market prices slashed by 50 to 75 percent. But the tide is turning and is chicken back on menus and dinner plates. “People have come to understand that no human casualty is going to be registered in Cameroon since we generally cook our chicken well,” said Julius Nde Ndikuma, a restaurant owner in the Meleng District of central Yaounde, who said he prepares and sells at least 10 whole chickens daily. The European Union has offered the Cameroon government 600,000 euros to fight bird flu, which Cameroon’s minister of livestock, fisheries and animal industries, Aboubakary Sarki, told IRIN would be used to buy protective materials for health workers. Moussa Bashirou, Cameroon co-ordinator for the Pan-African Epizootic Control Programme in Yaounde, told IRIN that the country’s testing facilities needed upgrading, too. “Cameroon must reinforce the capacity of its laboratories for a quick and efficient diagnosis of the disease,” he said. But Bernard Enow Ashu, ordering chicken at a restaurant in Yaounde, dismissed the bird flu concerns. “Bird flu is a white man’s disease,” he said as he tucked into a fried chicken wing. “They don’t cook their chicken well before eating, and here in Cameroon we cook or roast our chicken very well, so why should we be afraid?”