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Bird flu in Pakistan sparks concern

N. Gopal Raj

Border States such as Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Punjab have been alerted.

OUTBREAKS OF the H5N1 bird flu in neighbouring Pakistan is setting off alarm bells in India. The worry is that the virus, which is highly contagious in birds and occasionally infects humans, might somehow travel across the border.

Earlier this month, the virus was found to have killed some chicken in Rawalpindi, peacocks in north-west Mansehra, and subsequently a few turkeys in the capital, Islamabad. Now it is reported that the virus has struck down peacocks and a goose at the Marghzar zoo in Islamabad.

It was in February last year that the H5N1 virus killed poultry in Maharashtra and set off a wave of panic in this country. Although further outbreaks followed in others parts of the State as well as in neighbouring areas of Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, extensive culling of poultry successfully stamped out the infection by mid-April.

Genetic analysis of the H5N1 strain found in India suggested that migrating wild waterfowl might have brought the virus. At the time, wild birds were blamed for spreading the virus to many countries in Europe, parts of West Asia, and Nigeria.

Following a period when viral activity declined, H5N1 returned in a more virulent form as winter set in. Since late last year, outbreaks of bird flu have occurred in Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea, Thailand, China, Japan, Egypt, Nigeria, and Hungary. Russia recently confirmed that the virus had killed backyard poultry in three towns near Moscow. The virus was also found at a commercial turkey farm in Britain earlier this month.

Although the virus does not readily jump to humans, it is often lethal when it does so. Over 60 per cent of the 116 people infected in 2006 died. According the World Health Organisation, since 2003 the virus has infected 274 people of whom 167 died.

The big fear is that the more the virus circulates in poultry, the greater the chance that it might acquire the ability to easily infect humans and thus set off a dangerous global pandemic.

Passed on through poultry trade?

This season's wave of avian flu, unlike that of last season, is largely believed to be passed on through the poultry trade as opposed to migration of contaminated wild birds, observed David Nabarro, Senior United Nations System Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza, recently.

Using its network, the Bombay Natural History Society has been monitoring wild birds at almost 30 sites in the country. The migrations into India have ended and the wild birds are likely to start their spring migration back to the northern latitudes in a few weeks' time, according to BNHS director Asad Rahmani.

So far, it was only at Chilka Lake in Orissa that bird-watchers found wild birds dying and the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory at Bhopal had confirmed that those birds did not die of H5N1, Dr. Rahmani told this correspondent.

The outbreaks of bird flu in Pakistan were reason for alarm, said S.K. Bandyopadhyay, the Union Government's Animal Husbandry Commissioner. Border States such as Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Punjab have been alerted and asked to be watchful, he told The Hindu.

As the price of chicken was lower in India than in neighbouring countries, smuggling of these birds from across the border was not likely.

On the other hand, the virus might hitch a ride into India on a bird like the peacock, which was not a great flier but hopped from one field to another, he added.

"We are keeping our fingers crossed," said Dr. Bandyopadhyay, himself a virologist.

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