AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein has strong­ly warned against the il­le­gal im­por­ta­tion of an­i­mals, not­ing it is crit­i­cal to the Caribbean’s ef­forts to pre­vent the spread of avian in­fluen­za (bird flu) and oth­er an­i­mal-borne dis­eases.

He made the com­ment at the 25th Meet­ing of the Cari­com Chief Vet­eri­nary Of­fi­cers and the sixth Carib­Vet Gen­er­al As­sem­bly at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, Ho­sein said T&T, through the min­istry, had tak­en mea­sures to pre­vent the il­le­gal en­try of an­i­mals in or­der to curb the threat and spread of high­ly path­o­gen­ic virus­es such as avian in­fluen­za (HPAI) A (H5N1) virus­es.

“We have been deal­ing with a sit­u­a­tion where an­i­mals come in­to this coun­try, and they come il­le­gal­ly through the bor­ders. And we have to deal with it very se­ri­ous­ly be­cause these an­i­mals come in­to the coun­try with a lot of dis­eases, and we have to take care of our health, of our peo­ple,” Ho­sein said.

“We are in this with the po­lice, the Coast Guard, and the Prae­di­al Lar­ce­ny Squad, which is the po­lice un­der the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, are go­ing to deal with these cit­i­zens very, very se­ri­ous­ly.”

While Carib­Vet and the min­istry con­tin­ue to work to­geth­er to en­sure health and food safe­ty lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly, Ho­sein urged cit­i­zens to pro­tect them­selves as much as pos­si­ble by sup­port­ing lo­cal farm­ers and poul­try sup­pli­ers.

“Try not to use the for­eign (poul­try) be­cause you don’t know how long it is on the shelves there, or how long it is in the gro­ceries. Try and use fresh poul­try. Get away. I hope I’m not of­fend­ing any­body. But I’m ad­vis­ing you all be­cause I start­ed to do it,” he added.

“Eat fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles. And al­ways use the farm­ers in your com­mu­ni­ty and sup­port them. They might be a lit­tle more ex­pen­sive, but in the long run, it’s worth it.”

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of the re­gion fol­low­ing the glob­al One Health ap­proach, stress­ing that the health of peo­ple was close­ly con­nect­ed to the health of an­i­mals.

Deyals­ingh an­nounced that while a vac­cine for H5N1 ex­ist­ed, it was in short sup­ply and avail­able on­ly for high-risk in­di­vid­u­als such as farm work­ers and vet­eri­nar­i­ans.

“The oth­er ques­tion I get asked re­cent­ly as Min­is­ter of Health is, does the sea­son­al flu vac­cine work against H5N1? And the an­swer is, no,” Deyals­ingh said.

How­ev­er, he ex­plained that get­ting the sea­son­al flu vac­cine was still im­por­tant, as it re­duced the chances of some­one be­com­ing in­fect­ed with both a sea­son­al in­fluen­za strain and the H5N1 strain.

“The in­fluen­za vac­cine is im­por­tant to get even though it may not pro­tect you from H5N1. How­ev­er, if you don’t get it and you get H3N1, H3N2 and H5N1 and that re­as­sort­ment takes place, we are in trou­ble. So the take­away is, get vac­ci­nat­ed.”