KARACHI, Dec 26: The provincial health authorities have taken no preventive measures to date to counter an outbreak of bird flu in migratory birds in the current season despite instructions from Islamabad to set up a surveillance cell for the purpose, sources told Dawn.

Sources said before the migrating birds started arriving in Pakistani wetlands from Siberia and Central Asia, Islamabad had asked the provincial health authorities to create permanent special surveillance cells in coordination with the federal health ministry.

The Sindh Health Department is still to set up such a cell.

The Sindh Health Department had established a temporary monitoring cell to counter the threat posed by the outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu reported at some poultry farms from Islamabad’s outskirts and the northern areas early this year.

However, once the threat passed, this cell was wound up.

The National Agriculture Research Centre in Islamabad meanwhile maintains an extensive surveillance programme to monitor avian influenza. It has set up a dozen laboratories across the country which obtain samples from thousands of birds each month.

However, the Punjab health department has no mechanism to monitor poultry farms and check the eggs coming from Charsadda and Abbotabad, where the country’s first H5N1 virus outbreak was reported. The NARC officials in Islamabad, fear the virus can be transported to Karachi.

“If effective preventive measures are not taken and sale of infected birds is not checked, there is a possibility of the recurrence of H5N1 in the country this season,” said a veterinary doctor. Officials said the danger lies at the lakes where migratory birds amass. “Manchar and Keenjhar lakes are where the migratory birds concentrate,” an official said. The Sindh authorities had announced last year to evolve a permanent surveillance cell exclusively for bird flu in 2005, which would monitor the poultry farms across the province and take steps for protection of poultry workers but this system has not been evolved.