Police at Mankranso in the Ahafo Ano South East District of the Ashanti Region, are holding a middle-aged woman in custody after she was intercepted with birds suspected to have died of Bird Flu.
Officials of the Veterinary Service in the district, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, and the National Disaster Management Organization, who got information on Wednesday of the woman transporting the dead birds to the market, informed the police to pick her up.
The suspect, who has been identified as Habiba Amidu, was said to have taken the birds contained in two sacks from an infected poultry farm.
The Ahafo Ano South East District Director of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Martin Amoah, told Citi News over a thousand birds have been destroyed at two infected poultry farms in the area.
“We knew about the incident, but we also received a call from one of the communities. So the NADMO Director and I rushed to the place and saw that the woman has two sacks of dead birds in a taxi, ready to move. When we inquired, the taxi driver said, he suspected the woman so instead of driving her to her destination, he drove to the community itself and raised an alarm. So quickly, we had to invite the police and take the birds back to the poultry farm for the police to take her away.”
The Veterinary Services Department has put 12 regions on red alert over a possible outbreak of bird flu.
The service says its officers in the five regions of the North, the three Bono regions, the Western, Western North, Eastern, and Oti Regions, have been asked to put in measures to prevent an outbreak.
So far, a total of 24 farms in four regions have been affected by the outbreak of the Avian Influenza known as bird flu.
Greater Accra is leading the chart with 18 farms, while the Volta Region has recorded an outbreak in one farm.
A total of 41,451 birds have been affected resulting in the death of 18,814 naturally, while 22,637 of them have been destroyed as part of disease containment measures.
