The bird flu advisory

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Managing Editor ANTONIETA B. LOPEZ Business Editor ODETTE MONTELIBANO Desk Editor MARY ANN BARCELONA Advertising Coordinator RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete

ANDRES R. LEONARDIA Managing Director

The timely advisory and the strict banning of the importation of live chickens and other poultry products from avian-influenza, or bird flu-infected countries in the region by the Department of Agriculture should be taken seriously by everybody in the country.

The DA has laid down measures to protect local shores from threats of bird flu pandemic entering the country. Bird flu is considered a zoonotic disease, one that is transmissible to humans.

In Negros Oriental, quarantine officers have been deployed to keep track of incoming shipments at the Dumaguete and Sibulan ports of smuggled goods like processed meat from cows, hogs, and specially chickens.

The local DA has been watching and monitoring identified areas in the province where migratory birds have their usual flight patterns. They reportedly tend to congregate in Tanjay City, Bais City, Amlan, and Manjuyod in the province every last quarter of each year.

Residents in these areas have been given ample warning not to go near bird droppings and advised to fence their chickens so they will not come in contact with droppings of migratory birds, as the avian influenza virus may be transmitted for the duration of the season.

We must watch out for this phenomenon because our country is within the flight patterns of migratory birds traveling from some infected northern countries to escape the severe winter season.

As of today, we still enjoy our being a bird flu-free country in Southeast Asia. But if we do not take precautionary measures this early, we might wake up to find that the disease has already been brought in.*