By Florence Afriyie Mensah
Kumasi, March 29, GNA – The Veterinary Services Directorate of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), has intensified engagements with poultry farmers in the Ashanti Region to reduce the prevalence of avian influenza (bird flu).
The Directorate at a day’s sensitisation and intervention workshop on bird flu, took selected farmers through the types of influenza, ecology reservoirs of bird flu, species affected, historical background, clinical signs and symptoms and biosecurity.
Bird flu is a highly contagious viral disease affecting several species of food producing birds such as chickens, turkeys, quails, guinea fowl, pet birds and wild birds.
Dr Geoffery Akabua, Deputy Director of Veterinary Services in-charge of Veterinary Public Health and Food Safety, said the devastating nature of bird flu disease was disastrous such that governments all over the world, made huge expenditures in controlling the infection.
He indicated that Ghana was not an exception and had equally been spending quite a lot of monies as far as the disease was concerned.
He said a major factor in controlling the disease was for very regular public sensitisation.
The MoFA, according to him, was strategizing on measures to control the disease by educating farmers, paying compensations, and disinfecting birds.
Since 2021, the state had approved and released GH₵15,630,913.33 as compensation to affected farmers.
Out of this amount, the Ashanti Region had received GHC 9,040,660.00.
Dr. Akabua urged the farmers to practice good hygiene on the farms, wash hands thoroughly after handling birds adding that, confining birds away from other animals must be farmers topmost priority.
He said all birds, eggs or manure from other farms should be tested to ensure that they were disease free before they were accepted at a farm house.
Mr. Enoch Tawiah, a poultry farmer based at Ejisu, interacting with the media after the workshop lauded the government for the timely interventions for affected farmers.
He used the occasion to appeal to the government to increase the compensation fee.
Mr Tawiah explained that the number of birds he lost at the farm to the avian flu 2021 was too many, but the amount he received as compensation could not assist him to buy as many birds as he used to have.
He urged the stakeholders to constantly engage farmers and expose them to such knowledge acquisition platforms.
GNA