The plague is coming and, once again, it’s going to catch us with our pants down. The avian flu broke out a few months ago in Bolivia and in less than half a year it has already touched poultry, wild birds and aquatic mammals in the south of the continent.
There are already numerous cases in Chile, but there have been many more in Peru. It is assumed that the Humboldt current does not bring sea lions and seals beyond the coast of Peru and do not reach the equator, but it is known that many birds migrate south in certain months of the year and do so again in the opposite way to the following semester, they can transport the virus to other territories that until now have been immune to the scourge.
Bird flu is a disease that attacks the stomach and bronchial tubes of birds, causing them to gasp, cough and diarrhoea, followed by rapid death. Many times the head, neck and eyes swell and sometimes bruises appear around the legs and neck.
There has not been a massive dissemination of the disease so that ordinary people, and especially peasants, can detect the cases, but the ICA and the animal health authorities of Nariño have already detected seagulls on Gorgona Island, positive for the disease and in 7 different sites of the border department with Ecuador.
It is not known in Colombia of bird farms or gigantic chicken coops that have been infected and forced to slaughter thousands of birds, as has happened in Argentina and Peru.
Nor is it known of infections in humans that can occur, as this has been narrated in China, much less that any instruction booklet has been disclosed to immediately attack infections.
Obviously, the responsibility in terms of animals corresponds to the Ministry of Agriculture and its institutes and that of humans that can be infected to the Ministry of Health, but as things are in this government, we must at least harbor doubts about it.
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