The information is from the regional delegation of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries (Minepia) of this region which is the largest poultry production basin in Cameroon.
The Cameroonian poultry sector is again shaken by a health crisis, linked to the appearance once again of the H5N1 Avian Flu. It is in the West region, and precisely in the locality of Bamougoum, that cases of death have been recorded in a poultry farm, belonging to Mr. Daniel Ndefonkou, promoter of the said poultry farm. The alert was given on February 5 by the regional delegate in charge of Livestock for the Western region, in a letter addressed to the Minister in charge of Livestock, Dr Taïga.
In turn, the head of Morocco’s Livestock and Fisheries seized the authorities of the region, so that they take urgent measures to contain the disease. The Governor of the Western Region, Awa Fonka Augustine, meanwhile, seized by letter the promoter of the poultry farm affected on February 6, 2022, to inform him of a “stamping out operation of emergency,” the letter read.
In the process, the boss of the region signed a regional decree the same day, to enact a framework for operationalizing the management of this new epizootic, with the key to a series of preventive measures to be observed by operators in the sector.
These include the implementation of emergency stamping-out operations in the identified foci, their destruction by incineration and burial under the control of the heads of the veterinary services with the support of the peacekeeping forces. order; erection of the sanitary barrier at the level of the farm, with prohibition of access to any unauthorized person during the period during which the stamping-out and disinfection operations are carried out; strengthening the surveillance of the movements of susceptible animals, as well as products from poultry farms throughout the territory of the West region; the urgent implementation of epidemiological surveys/investigations by the competent veterinary services in poultry farms, hatcheries and live poultry markets throughout the territory of the West region; the movement of poultry and products from poultry farms inside and outside the Western region is only authorized for farms holding a negative PCR test result dated less than a week or of negative ELISA test dating back less than 72 hours for Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (Avian Flu) issued by the National Veterinary Laboratory (Lavanet)…
As a reminder, according to the Cameroon Poultry Interprofession (Ipavic), the avian flu epizootics of 2016 and 2017 in Cameroon caused nearly 16 billion FCFA in losses to operators.