Kathmandu, January 29:

Chief of the Department of Livestock Services Pravakar Pathak today said the department was preparing to establish a sophisticated laboratory to examine diseases like bird flu in Nepal within the next two years.

“We have already signed an ‘Avian Influenza Control Project’ with the World Bank

and the department has also a tie-up with the Food and Agriculture Organisation,” Pathak said. He said the lab would be bio-secure.

After the establishment of the lab, Nepal would not need to send samples of diseases

to abroad and will have faster results of the tests, he said.

Pathak said the bird flu in Mechinagar Municipality has almost come under control. “We are now conducting cleaning and disinfection operation an area within 10-km radius of the municipality,” he said. He said sanitary certificates were issued to poultry farms within 3-km radius of the first detection of flu case but the farms would not be allowed to rear chicken for the next three months.

Chicken in farms within a 10-km radius would be examined time and again during the next three months.

He also said the samples of the dead chicken brought from Surkhet, Sankhuwasabha and Pokhara were tested negative.