An unconfirmed worrisome claim of bush
meat diseases is currently spreading like wild fire across rural communities in
the Niger Delta area. Although local authorities or the active environmental
rights groups in the region have yet to react or take a stand since the
speculation broke, •Daily Independent• findings in some communities
in the region, from Patani in Delta State, down to Ahoada in Rivers State,
however, reveal that there may, indeed, be a bush meat disease scare in
Nigeria’s oil and gas producing region.
At the moment, there is obviously no
scientific evidence to confirm what still appear to be a rumour, but the Niger
Delta Project for Environment, Human Rights and Development (NDPEHRD) has
however attributed any disease arising from bush meat to the pollution
activities of the oil and gas companies. Foremost environmental rights
advocacy group, Environmental Rights Action (ERA), which has already directed
its rural field operatives to watch out for “clues,” seems to agree
with the mangrove forest-focused NDPEHRD.
ERA’s Executive Director, Nnimmo
Bassey, told our correspondent that they have received international alert
messages suggesting that new strains of an HIV-like virus are circulating in
wild animals and infecting people who eat them. This, he said, has sparked
fresh fears that such strains could fuel an already disastrous global HIV
pandemic.
Bassey said evidence from the Society for
Conservation Biology (SCB) tends to show that deforestation and the trade in
bush meat are creating ideal conditions for new diseases to emerge.
Continuing, he said the society, which had its annual meeting recently at
Columbia University, New York, United States of America, also claimed that
people who have closer contact with exotic animals are currently harbouring
novel pathogens. Perhaps, the society’s claim seems to follow the
discovery earlier this year that simian foamy virus, said to be another disease
that infects monkeys, has been found in bush meat hunters and three different
species of primates. A primate is any animal that belongs to the group of
mammals, including human beings, apes and monkeys. Although there have not been
unpleasant effects, it is, however, strongly suspected that it could mutate
into something more insidious. Director of the World Conservation
Society’s field veterinary programme, William Karesh, says the simian
foamy virus is basically a virus looking for a disease.
Despite these concerns, there are however
no evidence in the Niger Delta area to show how many wild animals are killed
and eaten.
There is a flourishing informal trade in
bush meat in the Niger Delta, like in other geo-political regions of Nigeria.
Often, rural communities hunt and eat small game. Two years ago, the Bush-meat
Crisis Task Force (BCTF) in Gabon estimated that bush meat sold in markets
account for 40 per cent of the total bush meat eaten in that country.
BCTF is a non-governmental organisation
monitoring the bush meat trade. Head of the BCTF, Heather Eves, claims that in
the Congo Basin alone, between one and five million metric tonnes of bush meat
was consumed last year.
But ERA says the dangers of eating bush
meat in the Niger Delta area are real. According to the group, “facts
available to us from our BCTF friends tend to show that the simian foamy virus
infection has been found in 26 different species of African non-human primates,
many of which are hunted and sold as food.”
Although environmental rights activists
are quick to argue that the bush meat trade is not the only way new diseases
could be dumped into humans, the trade in wildlife, both for agriculture and as
pets is a major global business.
For the well informed, the business is
estimated at trillions of naira (billions of dollars). For instance, in 2002
alone, over 38,000 mammals, 365,000 birds, two million reptiles, 49 million
amphibians, and 216 million fish were exported to the U.S. Last year, monkey
pox reportedly jumped from pet prairie dogs to their human masters. An
epidemiologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, Tonie Rocke, said that was just
a gentle wake-up call.
Previously, the disease had only been
known to infect humans after bush meat hunters ate red colobus monkeys.
It appears the trade in exotic farmed
meat also seems to be sparking an unusual outbreak of a common human parasite
called ••Trichinella.•• This year, a farmed crocodile
in Papua New Guinea was discovered with ••Trichinella,••
which was thought to infect only mammals, after being fed wild pig meat.
In 1999, another farmed crocodile in
Zimbabwe was similarly infected. Edoardo Pozio, a parasitologist at
Rome’s Institute of Public Health, claims: “There is a strong
chance that infected crocodiles may be in other countries, and could infect
humans who eat them.”
Among the Orogun people in Ughelli, Delta
State, eating crocodile meat is a taboo. With the disturbing news that people
in Papua New Guinea who ate crocodile meat are already being found to have the
parasite, which can cause fever, rashes, and respiratory and neurological
problems in humans, some Orogun people have said there is every reason to thank
their god.
Meanwhile, lobbyists in the U.S. are said to have started
pressing for stricter quarantine restrictions, even as ERA has pledged to
continue speaking for the peoples of the Niger Delta who cannot speak for
themselves and protect their rights.
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