While the authorities are busy brushing their responsibilities off, the camel owners are growing tensed with their desert-ships’ mysterious death. In the space of just four days 232 camels died in the Dawasir Valley, 400 km (250 miles) south of Riyadh, though the unofficial death-number is claimed to be far higher!
With the authorities hunting for the source of these hundreds of camels’ death, they seem to be investing more time in pushing the blame on each other – with the Agriculture ministry denying an infectious disease as the cause, food storage authorities conveniently denying the supplied animal feed as the reason.
Ironically, the two authorities did very less to limit the disease to one place for preventing it from spreading, or even to find a ‘serum.’
The camels besides being the major conveyance in the brazen and remotest parts of the deserts are also ‘big businesses’ in the desert kingdom. The Bedouin tribes trade them for thousands of dollars each.
Used for racing, the animals’ meat is also highly prized.
Authorities have been on the lookout for signs of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu over the last year. The virus was found in birds in two instances, in March and last year.
Although, as an immediate measure the Agriculture Ministry has lifted bans on poultry imports — fearing the cause to be the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, as the virus was found in birds in two instances – much before the other two authorities eventually decide a lookout for the main cause for the alarming deaths, more camels may succumb to the mystic ailment.
