JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) — The deadly bird flu virus could be killing off chickens in an African village right now.But it could very well go unnoticed.

Even though no bird flu of any kind has been detected in Africa, experts say detecting and controlling the virus should it occur in the continent’s rural hinterlands could prove a Herculean task.

The informal nature of production and the fact that mortality rates among Africa’s backyard chickens are already high would make detection harder.

And poor infrastructure, limited resources and the reluctance of peasants to part with their only source of protein or income if governments decided to cull would make the disease harder to contain.

“A lot of these villages are remote and disease is a way of life in them,” said Celia Abolnik, a senior researcher at South Africa’s Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute.

“Newcastle disease can wipe out 80 percent of a flock but never get reported because no one is going to take a dead chicken and walk for kilometres to report it,” she said.

Newcastle disease, widespread in Africa, can be deadly for birds but is not dangerous for humans. The H5N1 form of bird flu can be fatal in birds and has killed more than 60 people in Southeast Asia after it mutated.

Scientists greatest fear is that H5N1 will mutate into a form that will pass easily among people, sparking a pandemic that could kill millions and cripple the global economy.

“The existence of other diseases such as Newcastle can mask the incidence of the avian flu virus and make it difficult to isolate and monitor,” said Nancy Morgan, a commodity specialist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

According to a recent article in the “World’s Poultry Science Journal”, about 80 percent of the poultry population in Africa is estimated to be found in “traditional scavenging systems” instead of commercial operations.

These are backyard chickens raised for family consumption or informal markets.

“The most striking problem in relation to village poultry production is the high mortality: Mortality rates may be as high as 80 to 90 percent within the first year after hatching,” write the authors of the article.

“Newcastle disease is believed to be the most devastating disease in free-range systems,” they say.

So if lots of chickens die in a remote Congolese or Kenyan village it might sound no alarm bells.

South Africa is probably the best prepared country on the continent to detect the disease with a rural network of government animal technicians and a programme for monitoring wild birds.

At the village level women and children would be the most vulnerable to bird flu since they usually handle the live birds.

West Africa is considered less at risk than East Africa, where experts say wild fowl migrating through the region’s Rift Valley stop off on water ways, a possible conduit for the virus.

And given Africa’s already high burden of human diseases such as AIDS and malaria human deaths from bird flu in an isolated area might be attributed mistakenly to other causes.

Chicken is a major source of protein on the world’s poorest continent and in many rural hamlets it is virtually the only available meat.

According to FAO data, Africa’s poultry inventory is around 1.5 billion birds. Production is estimated at 3.5 million tonnes per year, 28 percent of all meat production while annual poultry imports to the continent amount to less than a million tonnes.

Studies suggest village-raised hens only lay around 30 eggs per year compared to 300 for their industrialised battery counterparts.

And given high mortality rates villagers are unlikely to give their birds up easily to state officials for culling in the event of an outbreak.

“I depend on the chickens, it is the livelihood of my family, I educate my children with the proceeds,” said vendor Philip Okaro as he stood by dozens of clucking birds in a cage on a bustling street in a Nairobi suburb.

“I would not allow the government to stop my business, unless they agree to feed my family,” he said.

Kenyan agriculture officials would not comment when asked if compensation would be paid to producers in the event of culls to contain the virus. South Africa pays producers the “market value” for any animals it culls.