Bird flu worries arise in legislature

There’s no official word for it yet in Inuktitut, but concern about avian or bird flu surfaced in the Nunavut legislature this week, with several MLAs grilling cabinet ministers about the government’s plans to deal with the lethal bird flu and its possible spread to humans.

Migratory birds carry the virus for bird flu, increasing the likelihood it will spread around the globe — even to the Arctic.

Many Arctic birds, such as ducks, geese, swans and shorebirds, are “natural reservoirs” for bird flu, according to Emily Jenkins, a wildlife veterinarian and spokesperson on bird flu for the Canadian Wildlife Service.

However, so far, bird flu has not been detected in Canada, and Jenkins said it’s not certain a sick bird would be able to survive the transcontinental migration from Europe.

“We really don’t know if the bird could get the disease and not succumb to it before getting here,” Jenkins said.

However, birds migrating from Asia through southern India to Turkey have already spread the virus to Russia and Eastern Europe.

“If it’s going to come to the North [of Canada], the best we can do is detect it, and that is where northern communities can also play a role: if they notice large numbers of birds dropping dead they can notify people,” Jenkins said.

The bird flu has only sometimes infected humans, killing about 90 people and some cats to date.

The risk to people hasn’t come from wild birds directly, but from poultry, such as chickens and ducks. Those who have caught bird flu have been in very close contact with sick birds.

“They may eat them without cooking them well,” Jenkins said. “So, there’s a lot of protection in traditional practices of rejecting wildlife that doesn’t look right or is behaving abnormally.”

Last week in the legislature, Hudson Bay MLA Peter Kattuk said Sanikiluaq residents are worried whether the many ducks, which make their home in the Belcher Islands, are at risk of catching bird flu.

“We will be keeping a close eye on it because the birds will be migrating pretty soon,” Environment Minister Olayuk Akesuk assured Kattuk. “We will ask the communities to work closely with us, especially with our wildlife officers.”

Akesuk said wildlife officers should be notified about dead birds and will be able to conduct examinations. He also said the GN’s environment department is working closely with federal authorities in the South who are watching migratory bird populations.

“If they were dying down South, then that would be a good indicator that we would have to keep a closer eye on them before they do come up,” Akesuk said.

Meanwhile, concern about the spread of bird flu is growing in other regions of the circumpolar world.

Last week, Finland’s ministry of agriculture and forestry ordered poultry to be kept indoors between March 3 and May 31, the period when migratory birds arrive in Finland for the summer. In Russia’s Kola Peninsula, some wild birds will be shot for monitoring from the end of March.

These actions followed an announcement by Sweden’s board of agriculture that it was likely that two tufted ducks found dead in the southeast of the country had contracted the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.

Public health experts fear bird flu will eventually evolve into a different virus and spread more easily to humans, giving rise to a pandemic of massive proportions. Three pandemics occurred in the last century — the “Spanish influenza” in 1918, “Asian influenza” in 1957, and “Hong Kong influenza” in 1968. The 1918 pandemic killed an estimated 40-50 million people worldwide.

These pandemics circled the globe in six to nine months, but given the speed and volume of international air travel today, the World Health Organization says a virus could spread more rapidly, possibly reaching all continents in less than three months.

“Every time we turn on the television, or pick up the newspaper and read it, we hear talk of pandemics, and the avian bird flu,” said Cambridge Bay MLA Keith Peterson last week in the legislature. “It’s just a matter of time before the pandemic will arrive. It’s not a question of if, but when. It’s coming.”

Leona Aglukkaq, the minister of health and social services, told Peterson that the department is aware of the potential for a pandemic in Canada and in Nunavut.

Aglukkaq later said the department of health, through the Chief Medical Officer’s division, has been participating and planning for a high level emergency response for a pandemic in Canada as well as in Nunavut.

In a pandemic, one out of three Canadians could fall ill, stretching health services thin, particularly in remote areas that rely on one or two nurses in health centres.

“In our own organization, we have developed internally and stocked up on anti-viral drugs within Nunavut. The plan is still in the works and again, after the plan is completed, I will be able to share more broadly in terms of the next step and phase,” Aglukkaq said. “I can’t speak to what we would do should it happen today.