Dubai: Vaccinations for poultry in the UAE are unlikely to be part of the country's strategy to prevent bird flu, says a poultry group.
Poultry vaccination against bird flu is a controversial issue with experts unable to agree whether the benefits outweigh the costs, as vaccinated birds are protected against dying from the disease but not from getting infected from the disease.
Hamed Bin Khadem Al Hamed, chairman of Emirates Poultry Association, said vaccinations for poultry in the UAE was unlikely for the time-being.
"We will not do it now," he told Gulf News after participating in a conference on bird flu organised by the US Department of Agriculture and a US-based poultry group.
However, officials from the group did not discount the possibility of use of vaccinations in case of outbreaks.
During the conference, Dr Linda Logan, USDA attaché for the Middle East and North Africa, said vaccinating poultry was an expensive method that might not achieve the intended results.
"Vaccinations will mask and hide the symptoms. You won't see the birds dying [even though they are infected] so you may spread it to your neighbours," she said.
She also said vaccinations have to be administered for over a decade, which might put a strain on countries' wallets.
However, she said it was up to individual countries to vaccinate their poultry.
Some countries, believing vaccinations were the best way to prevent the outbreak from spiralling out of control, have chosen to vaccinate their poultry, including Thailand, Hungary and China.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations supports vaccinations in Nigeria to check the spread of the disease.
China, which has had eight human deaths from the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, vaccinated its poultry using reverse genetics on the antigen.
The move has been criticised by many because vaccines only protect birds from dying but not from getting infected and passing the disease. They also contend that vaccines increase the risk the virus will mutate.
