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Containment is the key

The bird flu outbreak in two districts of West Bengal has come a month after India declared itself bird flu-free in New Delhi at the International Ministerial Conference on Avian and Pandemic Influenza and became, for the first time, a donor to fight the menace. The last outbreak was in 2006 at Navapur in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra when several thousand birds were killed by the virus. The latest episode, confirmed by the Bhopal-based laboratory to be an attack of the widely prevalent H5H1 strain, has killed nearly 35,000 birds over the past one week. The government has issued orders to cull all birds within a radius of five kilometres and to look out for possible human infections. With the outbreak seen mostly in backyard poultry, the success of the culling operations will largely depend on the timely compensation offered to owners. It is comforting that a door-to-door inspection of people with suspected symptoms of bird flu has already been undertaken. How well the authorities succeed in containing the spread and preventing any human infection would indicate the robustness of the government’s “full-fledged action plan to combat avian influenza pandemic when and if it strikes.” Only a timely containment would help prevent a bird flu pandemic, which was seen a few years ago. Unlike in 2006 when the outbreak was initially dismissed as some kind of a chicken malady, the cause of death this time has been confirmed unequivocally, thanks to greater preparedness. While containment is the immediate priority, the task of identifying the strain and comparing it with samples collected from earlier outbreaks to check for any mutation is equally important.

Though precise information on the route of virus transmission is not yet available, there is a strong possibility that the bird flu has come from Bangladesh. The H5N1 avian virus, first reported near Dhaka in March last year, has been spreading; it has affected 23 of the 64 districts in that country so far. Migratory birds have been found to be responsible for long distance transmission of the virus, and within a region it has been well documented that the movement of men and material carrying the virus is a sufficient cause for H5N1 to spread. In the latest case, the continuing trade in birds across the international border appears to have provided the transmission route. Immediate measures have to be taken to avoid such movement of birds, especially when avian flu is still prevalent in Bangladesh. This is important as Bangladesh, which has been unable to stop the spread of the disease for the last ten months, may well have let the virus become deeply entrenched among its bird population.

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