Nghe An focuses on zoning and preventing African swine fever

Comrade Dinh Viet Hong - Vice Chairman of Nghe An Provincial People's Committee said: On the evening of March 13, African swine fever appeared in Quynh My commune, Quynh Luu district, functional agencies and local authorities are blocking off and focusing on disinfection and destruction work here.

Quynh My Commune (Quynh Luu) set up a checkpoint to control African swine fever in hamlet 7 for vehicles entering and leaving the epidemic area. Photo: Lam Tung

It is known that on March 12, Mr. Hoang Van L.'s family (in hamlet 7, Quynh My commune, Quynh Luu district) had two sick sows. The local authorities took samples and destroyed these two sows. Later, the test results were positive for African swine fever, so that same evening, the Department of Animal Health and Quynh Luu district destroyed the entire herd of pigs and disinfected the surrounding area.

On March 13 and 14, disinfection work was completed in the epidemic area. Hamlet 7, Quynh Ly commune, set up two checkpoints to limit the spread of the disease.

Quynh Luu district has many pig bathing spots on National Highway 1A. Photo: Viet Hung.

According to the report, Quynh Luu currently has about 42 thousand pigs, of which there are 36 concentrated farms, accounting for 22.5% of the total pig herd in the district. There are more than 87 households slaughtering 1-3 pigs per day and night, mainly at home.

Previously, Nghe An established a provincial steering committee for African swine fever prevention and control. Disease prevention and control work has been deployed in localities and propaganda work has been well organized. For communes that have not yet had the disease, the district and specialized agencies need to develop an emergency response plan to prevent and control the spread of the disease.

Nghe An Department of Agriculture and Rural Development propagates to people to implement "5 no's" well: no hiding epidemics; no buying, selling, transporting sick or dead pigs; no slaughtering or consuming sick or dead pigs; no dumping sick or dead pigs into the environment; no using untreated leftover food as pig feed.

Nghi Loc people sprinkle lime to disinfect around the barn area. Photo: Thu Hien

Nghe An has established two temporary quarantine checkpoints in the north of the province, operating for two months starting from March 1 until the epidemic ends.

Faced with the outbreak of swine fever in the area, Vice Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee Dinh Viet Hong assigned Quynh Luu district and communes to allocate a portion of the reserve fund to purchase equipment and materials to focus on epidemic prevention and control. At the same time, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development was assigned to focus on epidemic prevention and control, and advise the Provincial People's Committee on documents for more timely direction.

This morning (March 14), Quynh Luu district held a meeting with communes in the area on epidemic prevention work.

To date, Nghe An is the 16th locality in the country to detect African swine fever, after Hanoi, Ha Nam, Hung Yen, Hai Duong, Nam Dinh, Ninh Binh, Thanh Hoa, Hai Phong, Thai Binh, Thai Nguyen, Hoa Binh, Dien Bien, Quang Ninh, Bac Kan and Son La.

Nghe An currently has a pig herd of nearly 900,000, ranking 5th in the country. Of these, there are 120 concentrated farms and nearly 296,000 small-scale households.