Poultry cull in Togo capital after bird flu outbreak
LOME (AFP) — Authorities have culled some 5,000 birds over the past two days in the capital of the west African state of Togo following the discovery of bird flu there early this month, an official said Saturday.
The poultry was killed and incinerated in Agbata, a Lome suburb where this most recent outbreak occurred, an official from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries told AFP.
An AFP journalist saw hundreds of villagers converging on an Agbata square to hand in their poultry to veterinarians for destruction.
Other officials moved door-to-door seizing any live poultry and killed them on the spot. Affected farmers were immediately compensated.
Officials say that, in all, more than 16,000 birds have to be destroyed and hundreds of houses disinfected.
The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu was confirmed for the first time in the west African nation in June last year.
No human infections have yet been reported in the country.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says 243 people have died from bird flu worldwide since 2003, the vast majority of them in Asia.
The H5N1 bird flu virus mainly kills animals but scientists fear it could mutate into a disease that is easily transferrable from human to human and spark a global pandemic.
