Poultry Problems: Caribbean Bird Flu 2015
A recently published article (link below) details the imminent threat of avian influenza, also known as bird flu, severely harming the poultry industry in the Caribbean this year. The poultry industry comprises a substantial part of the economy and could cause devastating effects to other local industries should it fail. Officials in the region are campaigning to help farmers protect their poultry from infection.
The expected spread of a disease by an infected individual takes in many factors, but these factors can be consolidated into two main concepts: how contagious the disease is (represented by probability p) and the number of others the individual comes in contact with while contagious (represented as k). This yields the model R = pk, where R is the expected number of individuals directly infected by the original infected individual and p and k are defined above. When R > 1, it is expected that at least one other individual will be infected, and so the disease continues to spread. When R < 1, the disease is not expected to spread to at least one person, and thus the number of infected individuals will converge to 0, and the disease dies off.
In the article, there is a picture of a poultry farm in Barbados. The birds are packed in pretty tightly but are otherwise free to move where they please. Bird flu has a 90 – 100% mortality rate within 48 hours of contracting the disease for domesticated poultry. Based on the picture, a single bird could come into contact with easily hundreds if not thousands of other birds in the 48 hour life cycle of the disease. This is an extremely high value of k, which means that if officials want to prevent the spread of the disease, they will need to drastically reduce p by creating an extremely sanitary environment.
http://www.caribbean360.com/news/region-in-efforts-to-prevent-bird-flu-from-wiping-out-poultry-industry
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/avian-in-birds.htm