1.4 million Chickens Destroyed In Nigeria Over Bird Flu

Over 1.4 million birds have been destroyed in Nigerian as the country tries to evade bird influenza which was recorded earlier in the year, Executive Director, National Veterinary Research Institute, Mohammed Ahmed, has revealed.

Chickens in a Nigerian poultry

According to a report by News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), 18 states were affected by the flu whose last case was reported on May 28 with 800 suspicions diagnosed with 500 birds testing positive to the disease.

The NVRI boss said that compensations for the destroyed birds were already being paid by the Federal Government.“Payment of compensation for the destroyed birds is already in progress; it started and stopped at a point, but it has resumed,” he said.

READ ALSO: Nigeria Loses Billions of Dollars To Smuggled Poultry Products

Mr. Ahmed said that the disease had subsided but “certainly not over yet’’.

“We are not taking anything for granted and have therefore gone into active surveillance.We have already trained people to take samples; their task is to buy and test chickens randomly from farms and live birds markets all over the nation.We are virtually out of the passive, so we must go to look for possible cases. There are states and federal offices and officers to handle surveillance even in the remotest of the rural settlements.

“Such surveillance is usually the most expensive part of disease control, but Nigeria is being supported by some interventions from the World Bank, FAO, USAID and other development partners” adding that the government  was also carrying out forensic investigation to ascertain how the disease came in.

“We are forced to do that because what was diagnosed in NVRI laboratories is not related with previous cases, it is a new introduction all together,’’ he explained to NAN.

READ ALSO: Bird Flu Scare Hits Obasanjo’s Farm

Mr. Ahmed particularly warned against cluster farms, and blamed that trend for the large number of birds that had to be destroyed and singled out Plateau and Kano as states with the largest concentration of cluster farms, and explained that the flu usually spread faster and engulf more birds in cluster farms.

He was said to have expressed satisfaction that the flu was contained in few months compared to the first outbreak that lasted from 2006-2008, but observed that more birds were destroyed this time.

READ ALSO: Bird Flu Outbreak Hits Ota, Sagamu

The NVRI boss disclosed that another poultry disease, known as Newcastle disease, was being zeroed in for eradication by the international community through vaccinations like Thermostable and MDV12 that is usually targeted at poultry farmers in the hinterlands.

 

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