Date set for the next bird flu prevention monitoring in Azerbaijan

The fourth monitoring to prevent "bird flu" in Azerbaijan will begin on May 12, the press secretary of the State Veterinary Service under the Ministry of Agriculture of Azerbaijan said on Friday.
"The monitoring will last a week, and the laboratory tests will take the same amount of time. The results will be announced on May 23," he said.
The monitoring, like the previous ones, will cover Absheron and the adjacent territories, the Shabran, Salyan, Aghjabadi and Lankaran districts, and the Caspian coastal strip. It will be carried out by a special commission consisting of specialists from the State Veterinary Service, the ministries of Ecology and Natural Resources and of Health, and the Hunters' Society.
The previous three monitorings showed no presence of the virus on the country's territory.
Last year the State Service conducted 12 monitorings, and more than 8 thousand samples from wild and domestic birds were tested. No carriers of the virus were found in any of them.
Despite this, the ban on hunting, consuming and selling wild birds in Azerbaijan, introduced in the autumn of 2005, remains in force. All of the country's border veterinary checkpoints are operating in a reinforced mode to prevent the spread of "bird flu" on the country's territory.
The State Service recommends keeping domestic birds indoors to avoid contact with wild birds, which, as a rule, are in most cases the carriers of the disease.

Source: http://news.trend.az