|
Returning from Afghanistan, where she helped diagnose that country’s first case of bird flu, UGA veterinarian Corrie Brown has a new perspective on the disease that threatens to become the world’s next pandemic.
“I saw the human-animal bond in another way,” said Brown, Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor and international activities coordinator in the College of Veterinary Medicine. “It’s a survival and a sustenance kind of bond – and that bond is going to be disrupted by bird flu.”
Brown was at Kabul University helping its veterinary school craft a mission statement that would help it reemerge from decades of disuse. She also taught veterinarians there to perform animal autopsies known as necropsies.
Three days after her necropsy workshop finished, a local farmer gave her a burlap bag with a dead rooster in it. Opening it, she saw a blue coloring on the bird’s once-red comb that was a tell-tale sign of bird flu. “I said, ‘this is probably it,’” she recalled.
The necropsy revealed hemorrhaged lungs, water around the heart and other signs of organ failure characteristic of bird flu. A researcher on hand made a preliminary confirmation of the viral strain using DNA testing, and a lab in Italy that had received samples from previous birds gave the final, definitive confirmation of the feared H5N1 influenza virus
The finding allowed the Afghan government to formally announce that bird flu had penetrated its borders, paving the way for aid dollars that will help fight the disease in that country.
After performing the necropsy, Brown returned to the heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Kabul, where she was greeted with a bag of fresh clothes, promptly escorted to a shower on the outskirts of the embassy for decontamination and given the antiviral drug Tamiflu.
Brown knew that being exposed to the virus put her at risk, but also thought of the Afghan veterinarians who would be testing for the virus without the benefit of antiviral drugs and protective gear.
She thought of what disruptions to the poultry supply would mean to Afghan boys selling their family’s eggs on the street and to a population that already doesn’t get enough protein. She thought of the potential for widespread human infections and realized that the global problem of bird flu has very personal implications for millions of people.
“It gave me renewed enthusiasm to do something positive,” she said.
|
UGA veterinarian Corrie Brown (back row, fourth from right) traveled to Afghanistan last month to train veterinarians to perform animal autopsies known as necropsies. The veterinarians are working to help prevent the spread of bird flu in that country. 
