Federal Health Minister Muhammad Nasir Khan told reporters here on Tuesday that Pakistan had approached the WHO for its immediate assistance and, thus, received an affirmative response.
"I met WHO authorities and they have assured provision of all-out assistance to combat the deadly virus," he said, while talking to newsmen after the launching ceremony of National Plan of Action for the control of micro-nutrient malnutrition in Pakistan.
Currently, the government has a stock of 10,000 anti-bird flu doses with the National Institute of Health (NIH), while the WHO would release its stock from Cairo, Egypt whenever the Pakistan government needed, he said.
To a question, the minister said the presence of H5-type virus was detected in two poultry farms located in Abbottabad and Charsadda districts. However, he believed it was not N1 strain.
"It is H5 virus and not H5N1, but we can't take any risk. We have sent the samples to London to determine whether the virus have highly pathogenic H5N1 strains," he said.
The minister said more than 20,000 chickens have so far been culled and the government was taking steps on war footings. The movement of chickens from NWFP to other parts of the country has been banned, he said.
He contradicted some reports that the bird flu was also reported in other parts of the country, particularly Lahore. "Everything is under control at the moment and we have sealed two poultry farms where the virus was detected," he added.
Giving details of the precautionary measures following the reported avian influenza strains, the health minister said hospitals have been put on high alert and isolation wards have been set up to cope with any emergency.
He said medical teams have also been dispatched to Charsadda and Abbottabad.
The H5N1 virus does not, at present, pose a large-scale threat to humans, as it cannot pass easily from one person to another. However, experts fear the virus could mutate to attain this ability, and in its new form was capable of triggering a flu pandemic, potentially putting millions of human lives at risk.
POULTRY INDUSTRY LOSSES The poultry industry may suffer a loss of up to Rs 3-4 billion as an instant repercussion if it is established that a deadly bird flu strain (H5N1) has actually hit farm chickens in two NWFP cities, sources said.
While as long-term consequences, the bird flu scare can force closure of Rs 80 billion per annum industry, the sources told Business Recorder here, on Tuesday.
Additionally and most ironically, more than half a million people associated with the poultry business in different capacities across the country can lose the source of their livelihood, they added.
There had already been a trend of drop in both prices and consumption after the authorities confirmed the presence of bird flu in the country, the sources said.
On Monday, the government confirmed it had detected a mild bird flu strain (H5) in chickens at two farms in Abbottabad and Charsadda and tests were underway to determine if the virus was the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain.
Poultry industry sources said the losses in case the H5N1 strain was confirmed would be of two folds.
It would not only cause death to millions of birds, but would also force the farmers to quit the business once the demand was narrowed due to fear, they added.
They said that 70 percent of the poultry breeding stocks were present in Abbottabad - the city where the virus first found - and it would be a major setback for the industry if H5N1 strain was confirmed there.
Over 650 million chickens - hens and ducks - and around 4.5 billion eggs are annually produced and consumed in Pakistan.
Of this, 590 million birds - 500 million broilers for meat, 80 million layers for eggs and about seven million breeding stock for reproduction - are produced commercially.
And the volume of rural poultry - keeping hens and ducks as pet birds - is around 40 million, of which 60 percent is in NWFP and Balochistan. The sources said the industry was still not that much mature to sustain such a shock like bird flu and feared this could sink the ship of poultry business in Pakistan.