DENR: Avoid contact with migratory birds amid Pampanga avian flu outbreak

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) on Sunday urged the public to avoid any contact with migratory birds amid the outbreak of the avian influenza in Pampanga.

DENR Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB) Director Theresa Mundita Lim said "close contact" with wild birds would risk transmission of the avian influenza virus.

"The annual bird migration season in the Philippines is expected to start around September and return to their breeding grounds by March in the following year," Lim said.

The migratory birds are reported to stop briefly along wetlands such as swamps, marshes, and intertidal and coastal areas, rivers, ponds, lakes, and forests throughout the country to rest and refuel for their journey.

Lim also said said that killing or poaching migratory birds could cause worsen the outbreak.

"We discourage the killing or poaching of the birds because this could just worsen the situation," she said.

This comes after Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol last week reported a bird flu outbreak in a poultry farm in Barangay San Agustin in San Luis, Pampanga.

The outbreak of avian influenza Type A subtype H5 was said to have happened first in a quail farm before it spread to poultry farms.

The Department of Agriculture has since ordered the quarantine of the affected areas, including the culling of a poultry and related birds within a one-kilometer radius.

Piñol has banned the shipment of fowls from Luzon.

He had also announced that slaughter of at least 200,000 fowls from the affected farms in Pampanga, which has been under a state of calamity due to the outbreak. —Jon Viktor D. Cabuenas/ALG, GMA News