KARACHI, April 11: While there is no authentic account of culling or disposal of H5NI virus infected and dead fowl in Gadap Town, citizens want the government to regulate the poultry farms.

They called for better surveillance and detection methods and urged the government to ensure a policy of openness and order inspection of the three affected farms and their surroundings in Gadap by a team comprising, medical professionals, environmentalists, doctors, microbiologists and virologists, farmers and consumers. The citizens feel there are many questions that need to be answered.

Meanwhile provincial health minister Syed Sardar Ahmad held a meeting on Wednesday with livestock and health department officials and Pakistan Poultry Association representatives and the city district government’s health department.

A source privy to the meeting said the minister observed that there had been no coordination between relevant departments of the government, while on the other hand poultry association also acted in isolation. To check the spread or another outbreak of bird flu, a coordination committee was constituted. Dr Aslam Pervez of the Karachi city government was appointed the focal person for Karachi district on avian influenza or bird flu. He will be assisted by Dr Aslam Jalali of Livestock Department and Dr Zafrul Islam Siddiqui of Pakistan Poultry Association. The minister ordered regular vaccination of birds, while poultry farmers should ensure hygiene at their respective premises, including regular fumigation.

The poultry farmers’ representative told the minister that suspected birds were immediately culled in the farms located in Gadap area, to prevent any possible outbreak of the disease.

Livestock and Fisheries Department Secretary, Mohammad Siddiq Memon, told Dawn that sanitisation of infection sites and surrounding areas has been ensured by the farmers and there was no imminent threat of avian influenza. I have been told by technical staff that increased temperature had been helpful in containing the virus, he added.

He said there are about 1,850 small and big farms in Karachi and the interior of Sindh, with about 7.5 million birds, which are visited by 200-250 stock assistants regularly for different purposes including collection of samples.

To a question, he said the modus operandi in the recent virus outbreak adopted with poultry farmers’ agreement was to withhold the news about any suspected spread of H5N1 virus. The intention was to avoid a panic situation as it might affect the poultry industry and consumers.

He said he was monitoring the situation and the source of the virus and its manner of transmission in birds in Karachi would be traced. To improve poultry farms monitoring, efforts are being made to increase our field staff’s mobility.

Dr Zafrul Islam of Pakistan Poultry Association said the workers at the three affected farms were daily wage labourers and they had been let go as the farms were closed. The possibility that they may have joined some other farm can not be ruled out, he noted.

I was not directly involved in the culling, but I have been told that magnesium sulphate was given to the birds in the water, in addition supply of feeds was discontinued and lights put off in their sheds to destroy them. He assured that all the birds were buried in a fool proof manner.

To a question, he said the PPA could not inform the provincial or city government officials or take them into confidence as the association had not been officially told by Islamabad about the virus. We acted on our own, and culled about 47,000 birds, while 20,000 died of the infection.