ISLAMABAD, 22 March 2006 — The deadly bird flu virus has been confirmed in Pakistan poultry yesterday after tests at two chicken farms proved to be positive, sources said.
The bird flu virus found in two poultry flocks late last month was the H5N1 strain, officials confirmed yesterday.
One farm in Charsadda, 120 km northwest of Islamabad, was a commercial egg farm, while the one in Abbotabad, 125 km north of the capital, was a small breeder farm.
However, Livestock Commissioner Muhammad Afzal said there had been no other cases of bird flu since the outbreak was first reported on Feb. 27 at farms in the North West Frontier Province.
Samples from two farms were sent to a laboratory in Britain, and the flocks — totaling around 23,000 birds — were culled and the affected farms sealed off in the NWFP in late February.
“I can only confirm that the H5N1 type of virus was found in chickens from both the farms,” Agriculture Ministry official Mohammad Akhlaque said.
“We have conducted tests on the people who worked on both the farms and they are healthy. There is no sign of any bird flu in those people. We have already culled all chickens so there is not much more we can do,” he told Reuters.
“The situation is under control and there is no report of any further outbreak of H5N1 from any part of the country,” Afzal said, adding that tests on birds from central Punjab and southern Sindh provinces have proved negative and a nationwide survey was being conducted as a precaution.
Pakistan had been bracing for bad news from the British laboratory because the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus had already been identified in neighboring Afghanistan, India and Iran.
Moreover, Pakistan’s own National Avian Influenza laboratory had identified an H5 strain at the two farms over three weeks ago, raising the probability that N1 would also be present.
The virus has spread across Asia, parts of the Middle East, Africa and Europe, and has killed about 100 people worldwide since 2003. “The public is assured that cooked poultry meat and eggs are safe to eat and there should not be any undue concern in this regard,” the ministry’s statement said.
Despite the scare, which has almost halved prices for poultry and eggs, Munir Ahmed, a 24-year-old poultry butcher in NWFP’s capital of Peshawar, was fatalistic.
“Life and death is in the hands of God,” said Ahmed, as he slaughtered chickens in front of his customers.
“Chickens have always suffered diseases. They die too. What’s the big deal?” Maruf Siddiqui, a spokesman for of the private Poultry Farms Association, said confirmation of the bird flu had put the country’s poultry industry into a big crisis.
“It has hit the last nail in the coffin. The industry is now in a deep crisis and many farms will close down very soon,” he said.
There are 30,000 poultry farms in Pakistan and the country’s daily chicken consumption is up to 3 million and egg consumption is 16.2 million.
Siddiqui said the industry’s losses were estimated at 480 million rupees ($8 million) per day.
