The Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries has com­plet­ed the Trinidad com­po­nent of a na­tion­al sim­u­la­tion ex­er­cise de­signed to strength­en the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to re­spond to out­breaks of High­ly Path­o­gen­ic Avian In­fluen­za (HPAI), com­mon­ly known as bird flu.

The ex­er­cise was con­duct­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO) and the Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly un­der the FAO Tech­ni­cal Co­op­er­a­tion Pro­gramme on An­i­mal Dis­ease Out­break Re­sponse in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to the min­istry, the ex­er­cise formed part of a wider na­tion­al pre­pared­ness ini­tia­tive aimed at im­prov­ing co­or­di­na­tion and emer­gency re­sponse to trans­bound­ary an­i­mal dis­eases.