JEDDAH, 9 November 2005 — The Ministry of Agriculture yesterday ruled out a possible bird flu outbreak in the southern part of the Kingdom. Muhammad Al-Sheiha, assistant deputy minister for animal resources, said that the report in Al-Riyadh Arabic daily of poultry deaths from bird flu in Surat Obaida in southern Asir were “totally baseless.”
“Veterinarians have ruled out that the poultry died of bird flu; they had no symptoms of the disease,” he said.
Al-Sheiha said the ministry was closely following the situation. “The person whose poultry died in Surat Obaida does not have a farm. He was keeping some 40 chickens in an iron cage and 20 of them died,” he explained. The deputy minister said the birds might have died of Newcastle fever, a viral disease which affects birds.
Saeed ibn Misfar Al-Qahtani, director of the Agriculture Ministry Office in Surat Obaida, said samples of the poultry had been sent to labs for tests. “We do not suspect that it is bird flu,” he stated.
The owner of the poultry, Abdullah Mohammad Al-Rahila, said he notified the authorities after some of the poultry “began to cough, faint and then died.”
Al-Rahila and his family were admitted to hospital for medical check-ups while authorities disinfected the site.
The ministry has intensified monitoring of some 500 poultry farms in the country.
