Aka, a bush meat vendor at Abidjan, told Reuters, "There is a huge demand for bush meat ever since the government said there was bird flu in Abidjan." A new announcement that confirmed the presence of the H5N1 strain of bird flu reaffirmed the position of thousands of West Africans when the panic was almost dying out.
On Thursday, sub-Saharan Africa recorded its first case of human infection from bird flu. A 2-year-old Djibouti girl contracted the H5N1 virus. The tiny East African country is the seventh country in the continent to announce the presence of the deadly virus.
World Health Organization experts have expressed worries some cases of human infection by the virus might have gone unnoticed because of inadequate health care facilities.
