Jamaica heightens monitoring of bird flu

The National Emergency Animal Disease Committee is being activated as the country heightens its monitoring of bird flu.

A high level meeting was held on Monday at the Ministry of Agriculture to assess the threat level of bird flu to the country.

This comes in response to a highly contagious strain of bird flu which has been detected in the neighbouring Cayman Islands.

Committee Chair and Minister of Agriculture Floyd Green said the country was now in alert mode.

The multi-stakeholder committee (comprising NEPA, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance, Jamaica Defence Force, Jamaica Constabulary Force) will examine all the relevant protocols “so that everybody knows their responsibility if we do, in fact, have a case.”

Mr Green also affirmed that Jamaica has the capacity  conduct its own testing for bird flu.