Thanks to Lucie Lecomte for sending the link to this report in The Peninsula. It tells us more about the state of mind of Qatari camel owners than about the health of their camels: MERS: Ministry slammed for not checking imported camels. Excerpt:
Camel owners are critical of the Ministry of Environment and say it doesn’t carry out medical check-ups on the animals imported from a neighbouring country.
Owners claim that when it was earlier announced that the dreaded Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) virus spread from camels in Saudi Arabia, the animals brought from there should be checked.
One owner said he suspected that camels could also contract the virus through fodder and yet the fodder isn’t tested.
A camel owner, Musfir Al Marri, told the local Arabic daily Al Raya that in recent years camels were being ignored by authorities. “Not enough attention is being paid to the animal wealth of the country although their collective value could be billions of riyals.”
According to Al Marri, after three camels have been detected with the virus, there is panic among camel owners.
“Owners fear that not only their camels but also people could be inflected with the virus,” said Al Marri. But no medical checkups are conducted on camels entering the country, he said, adding there were no testing facilities at the border check-point.
“The ministry should make arrangements to ensure check-ups at the entry point.
“We need mobile veterinary clinics that could regularly visit camel breeding farms and vaccinate the animals.”
According to another owner, Mohamed Al Shahwani, the ministry asks owners to take their camels to veterinary clinics for check-ups instead of providing that facility at farms.
“It not practical for an owner to take so many animals to the clinic,” he said, adding this was discouraging owners.
Yet another owner, Abdul Hadi Faisal, said it was important to test fodder as well since that could have been be the cause of the spread of the virus among the three camels.
