JEDDAH, 28 October 2005 — Saudi Arabia has stepped up measures to prevent any outbreak of avian flu in the country as the Ministry of Agriculture intensified monitoring of some 500 poultry farms in various parts of the Kingdom.
Muhammad Al-Sheiha, deputy agriculture minister for animal resources, said the Kingdom has set out a comprehensive plan, matching with international standard, to counter the deadly disease.
The Kingdom has banned import of poultry and its products from Turkey, Romania, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan, China, Thailand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia as part of precautionary measures.
Riyadh has also imposed a temporary ban on the import of live birds and eggs from Turkey and Romania on the basis of World Health Organization reports, which confirmed that the deadly strain of H5NI avian flu had appeared in the two countries.
“The ban on bird imports from Iran was based on a WHO report of Oct. 14 following the deaths of large numbers of ducks which were affected by an unknown disease in the country,” Sheiha said.
Scores of migrating birds have been dying in northwest Iran but Iranian state veterinary officials ruled out the presence of bird flu in the country although the cause of the deaths has not been determined.
“We have so far banned import of birds from nearly 50 countries and we are closely monitoring appearance of avian flu cases in other countries,” Okaz Arabic daily quoted Sheiha as saying.
Twenty-three quarantine areas at the Kingdom’s entry points have been provided with advanced facilities to deal with the disease, he added.
Fears of a bird flu outbreak this year have forced Saudi officials to take extra precautions ahead of a large influx of pilgrims from around the world for Haj. The Health Ministry has allocated SR25 million to purchase anti-viral drugs.
Reports of fresh bird flu cases in China, France and Indonesia have sent shock waves across the world. A girl with flu-like symptoms has died in a Chinese village where a bird flu outbreak had been reported, a Hong Kong newspaper said yesterday, but Beijing said it had received no reports of human cases.
Three people on a French island off Africa were being tested on Wednesday in what appeared to be the first suspected human cases outside Asia of bird flu.
Indonesia was investigating possible new bird flu cases on the holiday island of Bali after the death of several domestic fowl.
There is no evidence yet that the disease can be transmitted easily among humans, but experts fear it is only a matter of time. A senior World Bank official said on Wednesday that officials from all over the globe would meet on Nov. 7-9 in Geneva to discuss setting up a global fund to tackle the threat.
— Additional input from Agencies
