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Thursday, Jan 17, 2008
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Bangladesh border sealed

Gargi Parsai

— Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury

PREVENTIVE MEASURES: Chickens being taken for culling at Dhakhalbati village in Margram, West Bengal, on Wednesday.

NEW DELHI: The Centre has ordered the culling of nearly 4-lakh poultry birds in two districts of West Bengal after the outbreak of bird flu in the region was notified on Tuesday.

The border with Bangladesh — where bird flu has been raging for several months — has been sealed, and the adjoining States of Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa have been put on high alert.

As realisation dawns that the highly pathogenic avian influenza threatens to be a pandemic, India is considering favourably a proposal of the Food and Agriculture Organisation for a joint mechanism of surveillance among India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar, said Union Animal Husbandry Secretary Pradeep Kumar on Wednesday.

Mr. Kumar pointed out that the first unusual deaths in West Bengal occurred on January 4 and the matter was reported to the Centre on January 11. So far, unusual deaths of about 54,402 poultry in 102 villages of Birbhum district and of 266 poultry birds in a State Poultry Farm in South Dinajpur district have occurred. On Wednesday, it spread to three adjoining villages in Murshidabad.

According to Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, the France-based OIE (World Organisation of Animal Health) had been informed of the outbreak, as per the international protocol. He denied that India had received any advisory to ban poultry exports.

“The incidence is localised and the Action Plan has been put in place to contain it. Restrictions have been imposed on movement and trade of poultry from West Bengal. There are no reports of infection in humans. The situation is under control.”

Although the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory in Bhopal confirmed on Tuesday that the unusual deaths of poultry birds were from the highly pathogenic H5 avian influenza virus, the laboratory tests to establish N-typing of the virus will take five to six days, said Mr. Kumar.

So far, the bird flu cases in India have been of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain.

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