Avian flu found on a poultry farm in Sittwe

Wednesday, 19 January 2011 12:21 Kyaw Kha

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – The avian influenza has been detected on a poultry farm in Sittwe in Arakan State, according to the Burmese Ministry of Fishery and Livestock.

The state newspapers confirmed that concerns first arose as some battery hens died on a poultry farm in Bumay Village in Sittwe Township. A Rangoon veterinary diagnostic lab diagnosed the deaths occurred because of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI).

The Sittwe Township husbandry and veterinary pathology department issued an alert not to eat chickens from the farm and to cook chickens from other farms thoroughly.

On Tuesday, local health service officials and staff began to visit poultry farms in Arakan State to examine the farms and to spray insecticides, a spokesperson of the Arakan State Health Department told Mizzima.

A spokesperson at the Sittwe Township’s husbandry veterinary pathology department told Mizzima: ‘The poultry on the farm seemed to be infected and when the colour of the cockscombs of some male chickens turned black, they died. We contacted the veterinary diagnostic lab and found that the chickens were infected the influenza’.

‘Currently, the employees of the farm have been medically examined and it was found that they have not been infected the flu’, said Dr. Soe Lwin Nyein, the director of the Ministry of Health in Naypyidaw.

The detection of the flu is the first in Burma in 2011. The last case was reported in Yinmabin in Sagaing Division in March 2010.

In 2009 and 2010, a total of 126 people were infected with avian influenza. There were no reported deaths.

In Burma, the avian influenza was detected for the first time in 2006, when it spread through 25 townships.