The real threat from the spectre of ‘bird flu’ is starvation

Think of it. Millions of chickens are being culled or destroyed – if these cannot be inoculated – all over Asia and Turkey. The poultry industry is likewise being threatened in Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Greece, Bulgaria and Hungary, where the avian virus or H5N1 has been confirmed, not in chickens, but in other birds.

In France, for example, H5N1 was confirmed in one duck near Lyon. In case you forgot, Lyon – south of Paris and halfway to the Riviera – is (aside from being a lawyer "factory") the culinary capital of France, and the hometown of Paul Bocuse’s nouvelle cuisine. The daffy duck now "infected" will send the Gallic culinary beau monde quaking. Imagine the tons of prospective pate fois gras endangered, not to mention those imperiled canards l’orange.

Next, H5N1 has been confirmed in eight swans in Sicily and in the southern mainland of Italy (the heel of the boot?). From the home island of the Cosa Nostra to the casa de mezzogiorno, swans will be taboo – and the virus will probably threaten other feathered creatures.

In Germany, H5N1 was recently confirmed in 79 birds on the Baltic Sea island of Rugen and in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpormern.

In Austria, the same virus was detected in four swans and one duck (This doesn’t threaten, of course, Austria’s Presidency of the European Union).

In Greece, where the outbreak occurred earlier, H5N1 was found in three swans and one wild goose. In Bulgaria, three swans got it. Ditto for Hungary and Slovenia.

As expected, the Germans in typical methodical fashion have deployed hundreds of troops, backed up by Tornado reconnaissance aircraft, to fight the bird flu menace in their country’s north.

The French and the Dutch have proposed injecting their chickens with preventive vaccine, certainly costing millions of euros for every European country which feels compelled to buy into the program. Other European nations are skeptical however, about the practicality – and the effect on poultry – of such "vaccinations." In fact, some EU countries may ban the importation of vaccinated chickens and other birds.

* * *

The disease is apparently being spread by migratory birds. The Europeans have become the most panicky of all about the prospect of the virus jumping to humans, causing a possible pandemic that could climb to more than 100 million stricken. This has not happened, as yet, however.

For the umpteenth time, the World Health Organization has said – in reassurance to Indonesia lately – that there is no evidence the bird flu virus has mutated to a form readily transmissible between humans. Indonesia has been badly affected by avian influenza, with their first confirmed human case occurring last year. Since then, the virus has killed 18 of the 25 persons infected in the sprawling Indonesian archipelago just south of our country.

Since late 2003, avian flu has killed 91 people and infected 169 in seven countries, mostly here in Asia. Vietnam, China and Thailand, thus far, have been hardest hit. No case has been reported in the Philippines, but let’s pray, cross our fingers, and hope our Health authorities remain wide alert.

Yesterday’s The Wall Street Journal said it best, in an opinion page column by Dr. Mukesh Haikerwal, president of the Australian Medical Association: "Be Prepared, Not Scared."

The International Pledging Conference last month on Avian and Human Influenza in Beijing, attended by officials from all over the world, produced a substantial global response: $1.9 billion in pledges for a war chest to combat the killer virus. A small part of this fund (mind you, pledges in the end may – as enthusiasm fades – never be converted to cash) will be earmarked to compensate poultry farmers for their losses in their livestock.

The latter question highlights the most deadly effect of the bird flu scare. With so many million chickens being destroyed, the world’s food supplies are being swiftly depleted – and the biggest losers are the poor farmers who can ill-afford the destruction of their birds by government fiat.

If bird flu doesn’t get them, starvation and poverty will.

* * *

What is most heartening about the rescue and recovery operations in Guinsaugon, Southern Leyte, is how many foreign volunteers, rushed down there and are gallantly participating in the effort. As already mentioned, hundreds of US Marines got there within a few hours, right in the mud – with more arriving every hour. The Balikatan exercises have been converted, obviously, into a battle to pluck the living and the dead from the deadly embrace of the killer mudslide.

Our neighbors, the Malaysians, also sped a team of 15 volunteers to the scene. Five Taiwanese experts arrived, with three sonar machines. Aid has been pledged by the People’s Republic of China, Spain, Australia, Canada, Greece, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea.

Aside from the rescue efforts zealously pursued by those who refuse to believe life has been suffocated and snuffed out underneath all that mud, and the difficult recovery of the bodies, the challenge is for the organizers and authorities in Southern Leyte to prevent food, medicines, and other assistance, from going astray.

There is no truth, I trust, to the rumor that some greedy local officials dispatched trucks to haul away supplies, supposedly for the survivors in the grief-stricken area, but with foul intent to "hijack" them under the guise of helping in the operations.

This has happened in other disaster-struck places, like those ravaged by the December 2004 tsunami, and in other continents. This time, let’s show the world that we’re not corrupt, or even worse, ghoulish in such a matter.

* * *

A few days ago, while we were at a dinner in the "Fairways & Bluewater" Clubhouse in Boracay, I was asked by one of the Balikbayans who had come from Los Angeles with a group of fellow golfers to enjoy that island paradise and its championship-class 6,600-yard 18-hole golf course, whom I considered the greatest contemporary Filipino writers and novelists.

Startled by the query, I blurted out two names – that of the late Nick Joaquin (alias Quijano de Manila) and Frankie Sionil Jose. Another fine writer who could have written the "great Filipino novel" (like Frankie), came third to my mind: Greg Brillantes. I hope the ones I didn’t mention will forgive me, but these were the three whose names sprang to my lips, in answer to the question.

I’m probably biased in favor of Frankie because the two of us go back a long way – aside from being fellow Saluyots – but F. Sionil and his novels have been the most persistent in telling, in epic-style, the story of the Filipino, warts and all. Having fought his own way up from poverty, it’s clear that Frankie is obsessed with the dilemma of poverty. Even his latest opus which I received by messenger from him a few weeks ago, is a collection of his typically pungent essays and speeches, entitled (how else?) "WHY WE ARE POOR." Instead of a subtitle, he puts on the cover a pretitle: Heroes in the Attic, Termites in the Sala . . ."

I found the collection, on perusal, vintage Frankie. Full of compassion, of humor and tenderness and of rage.

Frankie, who founded that wonderful bookshop La Solidaridad on Padre Faura street in dusty Manila, has seen his novels translated into 28 languages, including our native "Ilokano." Sionil Jose is a veteran journalist, who started out in the ’40s – by gum, more than 64 years ago! We were buddies in the old Manila Times during that great daily’s glory days on Florentino Torres street in the TVT building, up till he quit the newspaper in 1960.

His essays on social issues and agrarian reform won him many awards. In 1980, Frankie received the Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Award for Literature and Journalism. In 2001, he was named National Artist for Literature, and in 2004, he received the Pablo Neruda Centennial Award. What an irony the latter award was: for Frankie Sionil Jose, a lifetime anti-Communist! He won the prestigious prize dedicated in honor of the great Chilean poet and leading Communist, the late Nobel Prize laureate Pablo Neruda!

Frankie, now coasting alone to retirement (he’ll never quit, though) has begun to look, with his shaved head like a benign Buddha. Don’t be fooled. Fires of anger and wisdom continue to blaze within his soul, and erupt from his fingertips onto his pen.

Yesterday, I received, posthaste, the following reaction from Frankie. I published it without further comment.

Maximo V. Soliven,

I hope you have perused my latest book, Why We Are Poor. That book is an endorsement of your column today on nationalism.

I always have had great affection for you knowing you for years, your opposition to a fellow Ilokano –Marcos – that took some doing! Also, I recall only too well that rousing extemporaneous Lecture on Rizal in Baguio some years back, and etc., etc.

Max – I am older than you but we have seen together our country sink deeper into poverty and corruption. And now, you have pointed a finger at the real cause of it all – the fact that we are not a nation although we are already a state. And why not? Because the rich Filipinos – the mestizos, the Taipans, the Indio oligarchs did not modernize this country. Being anti-Filipino, they send their money to Europe, to the United States and Switzerland, and to China. And for this reason, we are poor and our women go abroad to work as servants and prostitutes.

Max, how do we build a nation? How do we redeem our people?

Lakayac unayen. Nabannogac nga agririawen (I’m already too old and too tired to argue). Like Bertold Brecht said, "shouting about injustice hoarsens the voice."

I hope your voice will never hoarsen.

Agbiag ka! – Frank