Source: Dawn
While poultry farmers and officials concerned in the Sindh and Karachi city governments are waiting for test reports pertaining to the recent large-scale deaths of birds, a surveillance team on bird flu collected samples from another farm in Gadap Town on Thursday.
Sources in the poultry industry claimed that samples were drawn on Thursday from a poultry farm maintained by the Rangers in Gadap Town so that they could be sent to the National Reference Laboratory For Avian Influenza (bird flu), Islamabad.
In the meantime, some poultry producers and marketers continued making threatening calls to the family whose farm has been suspected of being infected with avian influenza (H5N1) virus for responding to media queries.
“The callers said that as we have ‘leaked’ the news to the media about the extraordinary number of deaths of commercial broiler birds and now we have to face the consequences,” said one of the family members. “Would it be viable, from the public health point of view, to suppress the deaths of thousands of birds in four days or so, while the incidence of bird flu cases are frequent now in other countries of the region?” wondered a member of the family that owned the affected poultry farm owner in Gadap.
Contrary to the initial calculations that the Islamabad-based bird flu lab would communicate the test results of the 10 samples taken from birds of the suspected poultry farm by Thursday night, nothing was received in Karachi by the time this report was filed.
Dr Aslam Jalali, the provincial surveillance officer on avian influenza, told Dawn on Thursday that he was continuously in contact with the lab authorities and any results on the samples that were despatched to Islamabad on Wednesday were likely to reach Karachi some time on Friday.
However, when contacted, an official concerned from the Islamabad lab said though the samples had been received and tests were in progress, he could not say exactly when the process would be completed. “It may take two, five or even seven days to diagnose the disease that hit the birds in the Gadap farm,” he said, requesting anonymity.
In regard to the bird flocks reportedly maintained by the Rangers, Dr Jalali said that the Rangers had contacted the livestock department for the purpose of sampling, following the deaths of a good number of birds in their farms, while the samples would be sent to Islamabad on Friday.
A source said that about one eighth of the Rangers’ flock had succumbed to some disease during the last one week and the breaking news about the large-scale deaths of birds in their neighbouring farms in Gadap compelled them to take the authorities concerned into confidence. The Rangers kept fowls numbering around 5,000, out of which 600-700 died recently.
Birds to be buried
The CDGK’s DO Poultry Asadullah Shah Bukhari said that in line with verbal instructions of the Sindh government’s director (poultry), his team had collected and bagged around 2,000 dead birds from the poultry farm from where bird samples were drawn a couple of days ago.
“We intend to dump or bury the bagged birds in an old, dry well present on the premises of the poultry farm late on Thursday night, while the culling of live birds would be executed only when a written letter, confirming the outbreak of bird flu in the farm, from the director is received by the district government,” he said.
It was further learnt that a team of students from a public sector university also visited the site of the private poultry farm in question on Thursday and drew samples for research purposes.
Independent sources said the government should move for an immediate survey of the poultry estate at Gadap to overcome the situation and ascertain the real cause of the deaths of birds in various farms there.
Former PMA general secretary Karachi, Dr Qaiser Sajjad, who is also the chairman of the medical committee of the Arts Council of Pakistan, observed that the authorities were failing to address the situation properly. He also pointed out that despite repeated demands from professionals and pledges by the authorities, a city like Karachi was short of any purposeful virology lab to detect, among other diseases, bird flu both in humans and birds.
In the meantime, the Sindh health department has once again reminded the executive district officers (health) in the province to remain vigilant about any case of human influenza in their respective districts.
Special Secretary, Public Health, Dr Abdul Majid said that EDOs had been asked to coordinate with other members of the joint committee on bird flu and send their surveillance report on a weekly basis.The department had also asked the EDOs to keep under observation the workers of suspected poultry farms and report to the department as well.
The Sindh government’s Director Poultry, Dr Ali Akbar Soomro, said that some more samples would be taken from birds belonging to private farms in Gadap on Friday. “It is understood that some virus had crept into the farms in Gadap Town. But its strength (H5, H7 or H9) is yet to be known,” he added.In the case of the farm in question, he said, he had information that 4,000 of a total of 6,000 birds had died due to the unnamed disease, while chances of culling of the remaining birds at the farm also existed, provided the reference lab for avian influenza conveys a positive report.
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3 responses so far ↓
1 DR K M SHOUQ // Feb 5, 2008 at 4:25 pm
POULTRY losses enhanced due to false hype of issue
ANWAR KHAN
KARACHI (February 05 2008): POULTRY farmers on Monday claimed Rs one billion financial losses
since the day the bird flu virus- H5N1 in Karachi’s POULTRY farms was officially confirmed,
saying that the sale of chicken meat had tumbled by 60 percent.
They observed that majority of consumers were panicked by the chicken meat since the day the
lethal bird flu virus had been detected. The entire local POULTRY industries has come under
severe attack of bird flu virus pulling down price of live-chicken bird by Rs 24 per kg and
chicken meat by Rs 40 per kg, they added.
Now, live broiler is being sold at Rs 50 per kg, which was earlier available at Rs 74 per kg.
Similarly, price of chicken meat has come to Rs 86 per kg from Rs 126 per kg, according to
Karachi Wholesalers POULTRY Association (KWPA).
“Some 2500 chicken birds have so far been culled after they were found infected with bird flu,
however million others are unaffected and there is no threat to them of being infected with the
virus,” said secretary KWPA, Kamal Akhtar.
He confirmed to Business Recorder that about 60 percent sale had declined since the onset of
the virus in the city, expressing fears that POULTRY farmers had started suffering financial
crisis and so far they had incurred Rs one billion losses.
The situation seems to worsen, he maintained that sale of the commodity could further decline
in coming days, adding that chicken brooding would also be disturbed following the current
dilemma. However, Kamal ruled out the possibility that the virus could become widespread threat
and may hit rest of the POULTRY farms, saying that bird flu was a common disease amongst the
chicken birds.
This could happen recurrently in the POULTRY farms, he said and criticised the media’s role for
hyping this issue up which had caused discontent amongst the general public across the country.
“Million of birds are still alive and there is nothing to worry of their health,” he added.
Assertively he said that no man had yet died of eating chicken meat despite being detected with
the virus across the world.
There is 0.4 million chicken demand in the city, he apprised and added that it could further
decline from the exiting 60 percent if the government did not act to restore the confidence of
consumers of the chicken meat by taking immediate positive steps.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2008
2 DR K M SHOUQ // Feb 5, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Free vaccination in bird flu-hit areas demanded
RECORDER REPORT
LAHORE (February 05 2008): Pakistan POULTRY Association (PPA) has urged government to subsidise
the import of bird flu vaccine and provide free vaccination in flu-hit areas. Central Chairman
Abdul Basit, Chairman Abdul Hayee Mehta and Disease Control Committee Convenor Dr Kamal demanded
it at a press conference on Monday.
They called for public education programmes to help the public understand the disease. They
claimed that since the emergence of the disease there had been no reports of anyone having the
virus, even those working in POULTRY farms. They said the international media had not given
this disease so much weight because there were no bird-flu-related human deaths in the past 10
years.
“The virus dies at 60 Celsius degrees while we cook our food from 100 to 120 Celsius degrees
leaving no possibility of life of this virus,” they said. The association leaders also said
there was an effective vaccine available for this disease, controlling it effectively in
Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Abbottabad. They said they hoped the outbreak would also be controlled
in Karachi.
Basit said over 25000 farms were working in the country, providing jobs to 1.5 million people.
Investment in this sector was over Rs 200 billion and Rs 45-50 billion agriculture and
bi-products were being used for POULTRY feed. They said if the POULTRY sector faced any crisis
because of this disease, it would also affect the agricultural sector.
He said reports of bird flu had caused a huge loss to the POULTRY industry when it broke out in
2004, then in 2005, 2006 and finally in 2007. The outbreaks had forced 40 percent of farmers to
close their businesses fuelling an acute shortage of chicken meat and raising the prices from
50 to 70 percent. He said it also deprived the public of a cheaper source of protein.
He claimed that his association had created awareness among POULTRY farmers since the past four
years through seminars and workshops. He said his association had spent Rs 300 million on
vaccination. They also called for a law to be enacted to ensure each POULTRY farm is distanced
from each other, adding that the North West Frontier Province had the law was but not any
other province.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2008
3 ella // Dec 30, 2009 at 8:05 am
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