JEDDAH, 8 November 2005 — Veterinary authorities are conducting tests to determine whether poultry found dead in a farm in southwestern Saudi Arabia were infected with the bird flu virus, reports said yesterday.
Samples from the poultry at a farm in Surat Obaida, south of Khamis Mushayt in the Asir region, have been sent to the laboratory for tests, Al-Riyadh newspaper reported quoting Saeed ibn Misfar Al-Qahtani, director of the Agriculture Ministry office in Surat Obaida.
However he said the move was “a precautionary measure.”
“We do not suspect that it is bird flu, as it may be because of the cold weather. Veterinarians described the case as common (flu) and not bird flu,” he said.
The owner of the farm, Abdullah Mohammad Al-Rahila, said he had notified the authorities after some of the poultry “started to cough, faint and then died” within three days.
Rahila and his family were admitted to hospital for medical check-up while authorities disinfected the site, it said.
Saudi Arabia has stepped up measures to prevent any outbreak of avian flu in the country with the Ministry of Agriculture intensifying monitoring of some 500 poultry farms in various parts of the country.
On Oct. 25, the Kingdom banned live bird imports from Romania and Turkey where the deadly strain of H5N1 avian flu has been detected. It also stopped imports from Iran which has also been listed because of the outbreak of an unspecified disease.
The Kingdom has also banned import of poultry and its products from Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan, China, Thailand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia as part of the precautionary measures.
Neighboring Yemen late last month identified Newcastle disease as the cause of chicken deaths which have prompted public fears of a possible bird flu outbreak in the country. Newcastle disease, caused by a potentially deadly virus for birds but not dangerous to humans, is not related to avian flu.
Yemeni newspapers quoted residents in some areas as saying that large numbers of chickens had died, and officials said public concern has led to a 20 percent drop in poultry sales.
Yemen, a country of 19 million people, has about 5,000 poultry farms. The country consumes 70,000 tons of local poultry and imports another 80,000 tones annually. Agriculture Ministry officials in Sanaa have said there had been no bird flu cases in Yemen.
The Gulf region is at risk from the threat of bird flu, a Bahraini official warned last week, following an emergency meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh to draw up a common strategy to combat the virus.
GCC states, on an individual basis, have adopted measures to prevent the spread of the avian flu, including banning the import of birds, poultry and their products mainly from countries in Asia and Europe where cases have surfaced.
