Azerbaijan, Baku, 4 April / corr. Trend S. Babayeva/ The preliminary results of monitoring on warning of bird flu shows that the epizootic situation in Azerbaijan is stable, stated Ismayil Hasanov, the Head of State Veterinary Service under the Ministry of Agriculture of Azerbaijan.
"The monitoring has not yet detected any dead birds, since the beginning," he said.
Some 1,421 samples of blood and 21 samples of pathologic materials of birds have been delivered to the laboratory up till now. The results of the laboratory studies will be released next week.
It is the third monitoring in 2008 on the warning of bird flu. The monitoring covered the territory of National parks in Absheron, as well as the Caspian Sea coastline and Davachi, Agjabadi and Lankaran regions.
The two previous monitoring has not detected the bird flu virus in the country.
In 2007, the State Service held 12 monitoring exercises, and over 8,000 samples of wild birds and poultry were analyzed. Bird flu was not found in any of them.
The ban on hunting, use and sale of wild birds in Azerbaijan, which was imposed in autumn 2005, is still in force. All border checkpoints in the country are on medium security in order to prevent the spread of bird flu in the country.
According to Ismayilov, the next monitoring will be held in May as the threat of bird flu in Azerbaijan is low due to the drop in the migration of migrant birds.
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