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Monday, June 21, 2010

Singapore : Avian flu jabs for Jurong Bird Park flamingos

Via Channel News Asia :

" SINGAPORE: It's not just humans who are getting flu jabs. The Jurong Bird Park is vaccinating its birds to protect them against the bird flu.

Dr Melodiya Magno, a veterinarian at Jurong Bird Park, said: "There's a need to vaccinate the birds in the Bird Park because the danger of bird flu is something that is real. For bird-to-human (transmission), there is a chance, but it can be rare.

"But we are vaccinating (the birds) because...if it (the virus) is transmitted from bird to bird, it can cause a lot of mortalities, like 90 to 100 percent for H5N1."

It costs less than $1,000 to vaccinate all 8,000 birds in the Bird Park every year. But the job is time-consuming and tedious. Still, the Bird Park has been taking this exercise seriously for the past five years."

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