Dr. Mohammed Ahmed, the Executive Director, National Veterinary Research Institute has said that more than 1.4 Million birds have been destroyed since the beginning of this year to stamp out bird flu in the country.
Ahmed while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Vom on Sunday explained that 18 states were affected by the flu.
He said “More birds had to go because the production of poultry has changed with the cluster farms. In Rantya, a village in Jos South Local Government, for instance, the cluster farms are so close and heavily concentrated in one vicinity.
“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.’’
He added that the Federal government is taking steps to ascertain how the disease came into the country.
He said “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.”
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