ISLAMABAD/PESHAWAR, Feb 27: The government on Monday dispatched two teams of public health experts and an epidemiologist along with WHO experts to Charsadda and Abbottabad where avian flu virus are reported to have been found in two poultry farms.

An official said that the teams had been asked to assess the situation in the area, give advice and train local health workers to help contain any outbreak of the bird flu.

Moderate mortality rates had been detected in two farms (one breeder and the other layer) over the past few days but no broiler farm was found to be affected.

Meanwhile, the ministry of food, agriculture and livestock announced that although samples collected from the two farms had shown low pathogenic avian influenza H5, some samples were being sent to the World Reference Laboratory in Weybridge in the UK to tally with reports of a local laboratory that had identified the virus to be of N-type strain of bird flu.

An emergency meeting was held at the National Institute of Health under the director-general health, Dr Majid Rajput, to share information, review the preparedness level and discuss plans to cope with the situation. Dr Khalif Bile, WHO’s representative to Pakistan, attended the meeting.

The meeting was informed about steps taken by provincial health departments to set up monitoring and response committees and train technical teams. The ministry of health was in continuous contact with the ministry of food and livestock, participants of the meeting was informed.

As a precaution, these farms had been quarantined and the NWFP government has been asked to take necessary measures in collaboration with the Pakistan Poultry Association to contain the infection.

Samples were also being collected from all commercial poultry farms in the area, the status of which would be notified later.

The ministry of food and livestock has asked poultry farm owners to increase the bio-security level in their farms and immediately report any abnormal or high mortality rate to local veterinarians or district livestock or poultry development officers. The ministry said that Pakistan was fulfilling its international obligations by reporting such cases to the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Animal Health Organization.

It said, cooked poultry and poultry products were safe to eat and there should not be any undue concerns.

The ministry of food and livestock had also set up a special information cell that will work from 8am to 10pm daily, including Sundays and holidays. The cell’s telephone numbers are 051-9205092 and 051-9206303 and its fax number is 051-9221357.

The federal government, in consultation with the NWFP government, decided to cull more than 30,000 chickens at two farms in Charsadda and Abbottabad after confirmation of H5 strain of the bird flu virus.

The decision to cull the poultry stock was taken at a meeting attended by representatives of the federal government, Pakistan Poultry Association and the provincial government.

The NWFP Agriculture and Livestock Department has collected 8,000 poultry samples from three locations in the province to verify speculations.

“We have collected samples from Charsadda, Abbottabad and Kohat,” Dr Saadullah Jan, director of the Veterinary Research Institute, Peshawar.

He said that some poultry farms had voluntarily culled 10,000 chickens in Abbottabad and Charsadda.

Federal secretary of the ministry of food and livestock Ismail Qureshi said that more than 14,000 birds would be culled at the Charsadda farm and 16,000 on the Abbottabad farm.

“This is a precautionary measure. We can not wait for a week or longer to confirm the presence of N-strain of virus in these birds,” the secretary said.

Pakistan banned import of poultry and poultry products from 22 countries affected by bird flu, including India, to avert the possibility of a bird flu outbreak in the country.

Interestingly, while the government banned poultry imports from neighbouring countries like China, Russia, some Central Asian republics and Iran but it was still allowing import of poultry from Afghanistan.

When the secretary was asked about banning poultry imports from Afghanistan, he said that bird flu virus had not been detected there. “We are doing intensive surveillance,” he added.