A poultry farm in Kpone has been quarantined following the detection of the deadly Avian Flu also known as bird flu.<\/p>\n
About 10 workers on the farm have also been isolated pending screening.<\/p>\n
The Head of Public Health at the Veterinary Service, Dr. Bashiru Boi Kiki-Moto in an interview with citifmonline.com<\/strong> said no one is allowed to enter the farm except veterinary doctors.<\/p>\n [contextly_sidebar id=”tjrBSB3yoeleHKfGr2zN5z8WbvxfQ4pR”]\u201cThe whole farm has been quarantined and when the farm is isolated, the people who are also there are isolated \u2013 people are not supposed to come from outside into the farm to get in touch with the people,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n The Ministry of Food and Agriculture has confirmed the outbreak of bird flu in Ghana<\/strong> <\/span><\/a>after test results from\u00a0the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) Laboratory in Padova, Italy proved positive.<\/p>\n According to Dr. Kiki-Moto, the 10 isolated persons have had direct contact with the birds and thus, they are not allowed to leave the farm but \u201cthey can send their families out.\u2019<\/p>\n The farm has over 1,000 birds and after screening, they will be destroyed through burning.<\/p>\n He also stated that another farm in Kpone which had over 35,000 birds was early on quarantined and the birds have since been destroyed.<\/p>\n \u201cOn Monday, all the birds were destroyed\u2026the place has been disinfected. The first round has been done and they are now on the second round of disinfection,\u201d he told citifmonline.com.<\/strong><\/p>\n He said the farms in Tema and Achimota which had the first outbreak have already been screened.<\/p>\n Compensation for destroyed birds<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. Kiki-Moto was of the view that if the government wants to revive the local poultry industry, then it should compensate the affected farmers.<\/p>\n He recalled that the 2007 bird flu outbreak started in Kpone which had over 169 farms but after that incident, presently, there are less than 15 farms operating in the whole of that area.<\/p>\n He said the only thing his outfit can do is to \u201cadvice the politicians but we cannot tell them to pay or not to pay but I believe that once the government is much more interested in bringing up the local poultry industry, they may try to see what they can do.\u201d<\/p>\n Funds to undertake nationwide surveillance<\/strong><\/p>\n Dr. Kiki-Moto indicated that his outfit has already done active surveillance in the Upper West, Upper East and the Volta Regions when news broke of an outbreak of the virus in Nigeria, Burkina Faso and Togo.<\/p>\n He appealed for funds to be released for them to visit other regions to prevent the spread of the virus.<\/p>\n He however mentioned that so far, \u201cthe farmers themselves are reporting if they see any abnormal behaviour in their flock and we go and take the samples for testing.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n By: Efua Idan Osam\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana
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