Open AccessHighly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in Japan: Outbreaks, Control Measures, and Roles of Wild Birds
Author(s) -
Kenji Tsukamoto
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of disaster research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.332
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1883-8030
pISSN - 1881-2473
DOI - 10.20965/jdr.2012.p0324
Subject(s) - biosecurity , outbreak , influenza a virus subtype h5n1 , flock , poultry farming , biology , virology , environmental health , culling , vaccination , highly pathogenic , veterinary medicine , virus , medicine , herd , ecology
Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) causes devastating economic loss to the poultry industry and poses a significant threat to food safety and public health. In Asia, the H5N1 HPAI virus has been circulating since 1996, and human infection has occurred sporadically. Points important for preventing outbreaks are biosecurity at chicken farms, monitoring, rapid diagnosis, and eradication of the virus from farms where outbreaks occur. Vaccination for chickens is not recommended because low vaccine efficacy may allow the circulation of the virus in vaccinated flocks. Since we experienced many chicken outbreaks and many deaths of wild birds in the 2010/2011 birdwintering season in Japan, biosecurity measures at farms have been enhanced and real-time PCR has been introduced as a rapid, reliable diagnostic test at animal hygiene service centers in Japan in 2011. Since risk of the H5N1 virus being maintained in wild bird populations may be increasing, international wild bird surveillance at the residential and bird-wintering places may be more important than ever. Real-time RT-PCR (SYBR) for subtyping HA and NA genes of AI viruses is quite useful for surveillance.