The Malawi government Thursday announced that the country had been cleared of any bird flu following the negative outcome of laboratory results of bird tissues that were sent for screening in South Africa two weeks ago.
Malawi was on December 16 hit with a major scare of bird flu after thousands of migratory birds, known as Fork-tailed Drongos, mysteriously died in a hill in the central district of Ntchisi, some 200 km east of the capital Lilongwe.
"The world must know that the samples have shown no presence of avian influenza," chairperson of the country's Avian Influenza Technical Committee Ben Chimera told journalists in Lilongwe.
Chimera said several tests were made on the sample tissues and the presence of avian influenza had been ruled out completely.
He, however, could not state categorically the cause of the massive deaths of the birds but said the birds might have died because of heavy rains that fell in the area on the previous night.
Chimera said although the lab results were negative Malawi would still ensure that necessary measures were put in place to contain any infection of bird flu that might occur in the impoverished southern African country.
Malawi's Director of Animal Health, Wilfred Lipita, told journalists earlier that the country has not known case of bird flu but added that although birds sometimes drop dead from unknown causes it was very unusual for birds to die in thousands in a short time.
Local people in the area suspected the birds might have died from sudden changes in weather but environmentalists disputed this, saying the Fork-tailed Drongos were migratory birds and they move quickly if conditions were unfavorable in a particular area.
"In fact if there is a sudden adverse weather these birds stand a better chance of survival than others because they move out very quickly," Hastings Maloya, Communications Officer for the Mulanje Mountain Conservation Trust told Xinhua.
The birds were suspected to have traveled from a long distance as one of them had a ring with inscription numbers and the word " Israel."