< meta name="DC.Date.Valid.End" content="20050825"> Amendment Nine: Chicken Shit

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Chicken Shit

More on the human-human case of bird flu in Indonesia.
The initial case in the cluster was a 37-year-old woman who sold fruits and chillies at a market in the village of Tigapanah. Her stand was located about 15 metres away from a stand where live chickens were sold. The investigation uncovered no reports of poultry die-offs in the market. However, the woman kept a small number of backyard chickens, allowed into the house at night. Three of her chickens reportedly died before she became ill. She is also known to have used chicken faeces from these household chickens as fertilizer in her garden.
Again the culprit appears to be chicken feces as fertilizer. That's one hell of a vector. Good news is after multiple chances for the disease to spread to other non-family members, no spread is reported.