B.C. poultry workers urged to vaccinate

Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia’s medical officer of health, is urging poultry workers to get vaccinated lest a raging epidemic of avian influenza skips into humans and mutates into a threatening new human disease.

So far the highly-pathogenic avian influenza carried by migrating wildfowl has not infected humans.

There have been 32 avian influenza outbreaks in British Columbia this month alone.

Henry’s urging echoes similar advice given in Ontario to workers in the swine and poultry industries and aimed to a broader spectrum of influenzas that have been known to skip among pigs, poultry and people.

Outbreaks have resulted in establishment of quarantine zones which anyone connected with poultry can only enter or exit after obtaining a permit from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The infected flocks are euthanized.

There is a cluster of commercial poultry farms in the Lower Fraser Valley around Chilliwack and Abbotsford, making poultry industry operations difficult.