New Delhi, Jan 29: Modern-day diseases do not adhere to a man-made line of control. They are transnational and cross porous borders with lofty disdain. No amount of human patrolling on the superhighways of medicine can stop the march of a disease nor, on occasion, give rational explanations for its origin. Cries about SARS-which killed nearly 800 people and infected more than 8,000 last year in Canada and Southeast Asia-are still being heard.

The avian flu, with its uncomfortable kinship with human influenza, is now taking on epidemic proportions, ravaging poultry in Southeast and East Asian countries like Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. It has also taken a human toll in Vietnam and Thailand. The latest to be struck are Pakistan and China which has confirmed an outbreak in the southern province of Guanxi.
The World Health Organisation has come out with a chilling warning: If the bird flu mingles with the human flu virus, it could kill millions. This should make the world sit up. Avian flu is so far not known to spread through human transmission. But the rapidity of its spread is unprecedented, as the WHO states. The scourge, it is said, could precipitate a more serious global health crisis than SARS in the absence of defences.
Millions of chicken have died or been destroyed, travel advisories against the affected countries are being issued, fastfood MNCs in Vietnam are switching to fish from chicken and Thailand convened an international health meet. These are knee-jerk precautions. What is being ignored is the alarming phenomenon of new and more lethal diseases emerging in drug-resistant variants and animals falling prey to mutant viruses as a result of being fed rendered animal parts.
Protein, indispensable to cattle nutrition, is readily sourced from chicken faeces and feathers, cow blood and just about any animal part unfit for human consumption. In 1997, the US Food and Drug Adminisration-acting to safeguard American cattle against the Mad Cow disease-banned feed containing byproducts of cows, sheep and goats. But the meat industry benefits from loopholes in the law, and there are no controls over farming communities. Cows are still allowed to feed on animal parts. While there is no proof of similar diets for poultry and cattle in Asia, lessons are generally learnt the hard way.
The increasing mobility of human resources responding to the demands of globalisation and shrinking habitats as a fallout of urbanisation have made it impossible to keep people physically apart. They are therefore more susceptible to contagion in the modern world, especially in developing countries like India. The Government, not to be caught napping, has done well to alert all State Governments to carry out tests on fowl population. It has also banned imports from the afflicted countries even though India imports a negligible quantity of livestock. Vets have been asked to report large numbers of deaths among chicken and preparations are underway to identify the virus in laboratories in Gwalior. All of this is laudable, since prevention is better than cure.