Important and urgent task in responding to African swine fever

Chairman of the Provincial People's Committee - Tran Van Can directs at the meeting

Up to now, the whole nation has had 29 localities occurring ASF with a total of more than 1.5 million pigs destroyed. Currently, the situation of ASF disease is complicated, spreads rapidly. The disease has occurred in the Southern Central and Southern provinces (Dong Nai, Binh Phuoc and Hau Giang).

Long An province has a very high risk of epidemic outbreak because it is the gateway linking the Southeast with the Mekong Delta and has borderline with Cambodia (the province of Tatanakiri has occurred); At the same time, traffic flow of live pigs, pork products and other means of transportation from the epidemic area travel through the province.

Long An is also a province with a high concentration of slaughter pigs, most of pigs are outside the province (provinces with epidemics) imported into slaughter, mainly supplied to HCMC market with 2,500 pigs per night.

Deputy Director of Department of Agriculture and Rural Development - Dinh Thi Phuong Khanh reports on the situation of ASF

In the past 2 months, the number of pigs outside the province imported into slaughterhouses and pig-buying places in the province is 184,019 pigs, of which the number of pigs imported from 14 epidemic provinces is 87,481, accounting for 47.54 percent of the pigs imported the province.

Before this situation, Long An implemented the emergency response action Plan with ASF. People's Committees of districts, towns and cities also issued documents to implement prevention and control of ASF, not to let ASF penetrate into the province.

Over the past time, the anti-epidemic work still faced many difficulties in terms of personnel and payment for participants of the quarantine stations; The epidemic prevention and control in the locality lacks information on epidemic situation from Department of Animal Health, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

In addition, most of the officials in charge of animal health at the grassroots level are working part-time, they do not meet professional qualifications in veterinary medicine to perform epidemic prevention and control activities. Farmers do not understand the dangerous nature of the disease. Pig slaughterhouses without license in the locality have not been managed and controlled.

In order to control and prevent ASF from happening in the province, Chairman of the provincial People's Committee - Tran Van Can asked all levels, sectors and localities to implement urgent measures in disease prevention and response, this is a key task.

In particular, local leaders directed relevant departments to regularly check at the quarantine stations, strictly control the means of transporting pigs through the area; continue to disseminate information and propaganda for breeders to practice good breeding and disease safety, regularly clean and disinfect breeding facilities, means of transport and breeding tools; When epidemic occurs, immediately report it to the veterinary and local authorities; strictly implement Directive No. 06 / CT-UBND, dated March 6, 2019 of the Provincial People's Committee on the synchronous implementation of urgent solutions to control ASF and the guiding documents of the Provincial People's Committee on epidemic prevention and control.

People's Committees of districts, towns and cities have strengthened the direction of prevention and control of ASF in particular and diseases in livestock and poultry in general, in which, it is recommended to strengthen propaganda for livestock farms to implement disinfection facilities regularly, inject vaccination according to the recommendations of the veterinary sectors and build response solutions when ASF occurs in the province./.

By Huynh Phong – Translated by Duc Tam