Response to Government closure policy of Maipo from HKBWS
Unscientific approach to avian flu undermines public trust
In her letter of 15 May 2010, Dr Mary Chow informed us that AFCD’s “overriding concern” in closing Mai Po for 21 days on finding a dead bird with Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) within 3 kilometres of the reserve was to protect public health.
This statement is interesting for five reasons.
1. Of the tens of thousands of wild birds that visit Mai Po every year none of the 30,000 tested to date has been found to carry the virus, despite an extensive monitoring programme.
2. Visitors to Mai Po never come into contact wild birds - because wild birds fear humans and fly away when approached.
3. The WHO website states: “The risk of avian influenza to humans is almost entirely confined to those who have had close contact with infected domestic poultry. For people who have no contact with domestic or wild birds the risk is almost non-existent.”
4. Dr Malik Pereis, a global expert on viral pandemics at HKU has publicly stated that the risk of human infection from wild birds is negligible.
5. AFCD’s approach to closing Mai Po is based on an EU veterinary protocol to prevent the spread of HPAI from one poultry farm to another. The EU protocol was never intended to prevent humans becoming infected by wild birds.
So the closure of Mai Po stems from a misplaced and over-exaggerated concern, and follows an inappropriate implementation strategy. This does not inspire confidence or trust.
However the decision to close Mai Po actually comes from the Centre for Health Protection (CHP), and AFCD are simply the implementers. Last year Thomas Tsang, the Controller of CHP, presented their protocol for communicating risk to the public at a conference on avian influenza. This protocol begins with the requirement to “dispel the myths” in order to calm misplaced public fears.
Yet the public continues to fear migratory birds as a threat to public health, and closing Mai Po (as AFCD has done six times in six years) serves only to reinforce this message. CHP and AFCD are not dispelling the myth, they are perpetuating it.
It may seem harmless to “protect” the public from imaginary threats, but it is not. The harm comes in the diminishing credibility of the Government bodies that are supposed to inform and protect us from pandemics. Given Hong Kong’s position in southern China - the cradle of SARS and HPAI and a likely location for future pandemics – we all need them to heed the lesson of the boy who cried “wolf”. The next time we face a pandemic how will we know if CHP and AFCD can be trusted?
Dr HF Cheung
Chairman, Hong Kong Bird Watching Society
