Bird flu: Quarantine worries

2004-08-06 08:52

Cindy Preller

Somerset East - Concerns are growing over the avian flu (also known as bird flu) that is spreading quickly in the area, but few visible measures were in place in the quarantine area by Thursday to contain the spread of this possibly deadly disease.

Although Agriculture Minister Thoko Didiza ordered nine roadblocks at a meeting in Bisho on Wednesday, several media teams drove to the farm Voorspoed, where the disease first broke out, without encountering a single roadblock.

Responding to queries, a spokesperson for the national department of agriculture, Segoati Mahlangu, said the roadblocks were "in the process of being erected by the police and defence force".

Meanwhile, the quarantine area has been increased from a 10km to 30km radius from the first two infected farms. Fifteen farms, where thousands of ostriches and several domestic chickens are kept, fall within this quarantine area.

All indications are that ostriches on a third farm, which borders on those of Syd Birch in the Middleton district, also contracted the dreaded avian flu although blood tests have not confirmed this.

Farmers who attended a meeting between the police, defence force, veterinarians and the department of agriculture in the town on Thursday said the latest farm belongs a farmer who owns about 2 000 ostriches.

An emotional ostrich farmer, who farms within the quarantine area, said he stood up in the meeting and insisted that all infected birds be killed before the disease spreads to the rest of the district.

"Must I simply wait until my birds are also infected? There are about 30 000 ostriches in the immediate area and we have to spend at least R2 500 per day on feed for the ostriches without knowing whether we have to cut their throats in a few days' time," the farmer, who does not want to be named, said.

Birch's 8 000 ostriches, all of them infected already, will have to be put down if tests reveal that this specific avian flu strain carries the high pathogenic virus.

Mahlangu said Birch would probably be compensated for his losses under the Animal Disease Control Act.

"Our strategy to contain the disease will largely depend on the test results from the samples we took on the farms. We made it clear to the laboratories that the results are urgently needed," Mahlangu said.

A veterinarian who attended the meeting said a vaccine could be put together only once the results of the tests were available since all strains of avian flu were different.

Mahlangu couldn't say when the test results would be available. He said blood tests would be performed on all the ostriches in the quarantine area.

Contact with infected birds could see the disease spreading to humans.

Zirk Louw, an ostrich farmer in the district, said measures to prevent the spread of the disease include preventing the movement of all poultry out of the quarantine area, washing down cars before they leave the farms and wearing protective clothing and masks when working with the birds.

Louw said the region in which the quarantine area falls is mainly used for ostrich farming and is seen as one of the biggest ostrich farming regions in the Eastern Cape.

- Die Burger