Roy Wadia Quotes on Animals (6 Quotes)

In large parts of China, especially in the countryside, over the last 20 or 30 years, the health system has been crumbling. You've got problems in terms of being able to provide basic health care to people. Surveillance is key to containing any outbreak, and to preventing any pandemicnot only in the animal sector, of course, but then you have to be able to also survey the human population.

The important thing is how the authorities handle the outbreak, how swiftly it is addressed and how quickly birds are culled. China in that practice has plenty of experience, so we are confident from the animal point of view the outbreaks are tackled as quickly as they can be.

It means that there is a question mark that hangs over the progress of the virus in China. It's perhaps more significant to get animal viruses, because this virus is still something that is primarily in the animal sector.

If the animals in the area were sick and dying, and if they were dying in small numbers, it might have been very difficult to identify that as an outbreak.

Although this is only a guess, there have been some examples in which human cases of bird flu were reported first and then the animal epidemic.

It just shows you that anything can happen at any time. It's a very unpredictable situation, whether on the human side or the animal side.