India says bird flu under control
India says bird flu under control
India says bird flu under control
20.02.2006 - 06:14
By Krittivas Mukherjee
MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's first outbreak of bird flu in poultry is under control, health authorities said on Monday, as they
launched a door-to-door check for people with fever in a western district.
The world's second-most populous country, known for its poor healthcare system, was testing about 30 people for avian flu after 50,000 birds died in Maharashtra state's Nandurbar district and tests on some fowls showed H5N1 bird flu.
"It (the bird flu) is under control and there is no need to panic. We are culling all chickens in...the affected area," T.P. Doke, director of the state's health services, told Reuters from Nandurbar.
"Thousands of birds have been culled and eggs destroyed since yesterday (Sunday) and more will be killed in the next few days."
Nepal has banned poultry imports from India after the outbreak of bird flu in its giant southern neighbour, a Nepali government official said on Monday.
Earlier, India's Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss had said between 300,000 and 500,000 birds would have to be slaughtered.
Amid fears that the disease could pass to humans, the government said on Sunday it had found no case of human avian influenza after preliminary tests on a dead farmer who was suspected to have been the country's first human victim.
Doke said
health workers and volunteers had fanned out in villages around 52 poultry farms in Nandurbar to carry out a door-to-door check for patients reporting fever, cough or cold.
"
The house-to-house search will eliminate chances of any one going undetected," he said.
The authorities were distributing protective gear and preventive drugs to hundreds of poultry workers. Blood samples from poultry workers reporting fever and cold had been sent to a virology laboratory in the western city of Pune.
"We have quarantined two persons, including a girl after they showed flu-like symptoms. Their blood and sputum samples have also been sent for testing," Maharashtra's top health official, Vijay Satbir Singh, said.
BARE HANDS
A Reuters photographer in Nandurbar said
health workers wearing blue overhauls, anti-viral masks and goggles were culling chicken by wringing their necks or mixing chemicals in chicken feed.
Television images showed dead birds being dumped in pits covered up by heavy earthmovers. The empty coops were being sprayed with disinfectants.
On Sunday, health workers trying to cull birds met with some resistance from poultry farmers, but they began cooperating after authorities offered monetary compensation for every bird killed.
Poultry workers have been warned against culling chicken without protection after television images showed many of them using their bare hands and little protective gear to bury thousands of culled chicken.
In Maharashtra's bustling capital and India's commercial hub Mumbai, civic officials kept vigil in markets selling poultry, checking for dead or sickly birds and asking traders to report any case of bird deaths.
Maharashtra, India's richest and most industrialised state, has hundreds of poultry farms and officials say there are around 900,000 fowl in Nandurbar alone.
The H5N1 virus is known to have infected 171 people worldwide since late 2003, killing 93 of them. Two hundred million birds across Asia, parts of the Middle East, Europe and Africa have died of the virus or been culled.
So far most victims of bird flu have had direct or indirect contact with chickens, but there are fears the virus might mutate into a strain easily passed among people, causing a pandemic in which millions could die.
Indian analysts have warned if the outbreak is not contained the economic costs to Asia's third-largest economy -- which is forecast to grow around 8 percent in the financial year to March 2006 -- would be "very, very high".
(Additional reporting by Adeel Halim in NANDURBAR)
http://www.swisspolitics.org/en/news/index.php?page=news_inhalt&news_id=6486150
