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India looks for avian flu in humans, to cull birds

Posted on: Wednesday, 15 March 2006, 02:36 CST

By Krittivas Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Health workers went door-to-door looking for people with flu-like symptoms in western India on Wednesday, a day after the country reported its second outbreak of avian influenza in chicken.

Officials said that they were checking if the latest outbreak -- which occurred in backyard poultry in Jalgaon district of Maharashtra state -- was of the deadly H5N1 strain that has killed about 100 people, mostly in Asia.

"We are not taking any chances and are straightaway going for a household check to see if there are any people with flu-like symptoms," Vijay Satbir Singh, Maharashtra's most senior health official, told Reuters.

"If need be, we are ready to quarantine people with flu-like symptoms in local hospitals," he said.

Health workers carrying kits used for collecting blood samples visited houses asking families with poultry if anyone had fever, cough or cold, Singh said.

After the first outbreak last month, also in Maharashtra, India tested more than 100 people for bird flu but all proved negative.

In the latest outbreak, several villages in Jalgaon district, in northern Maharashtra, were found affected after four of 22 samples taken from poultry in the hamlets tested positive, federal authorities said on Tuesday.

Jalgaon is 200 km (125 miles) from Navapur, where India reported its first brush with the H5N1 strain. Authorities said last week they had contained the virus after culling hundreds of thousands of chicken in Navapur town and neighboring areas.

A similar exercise to cull between 75,000 and 100,000 birds in Jalgaon over the next two days was planned.

"We are marking out the affected region after which we will begin culling. There might be a slight delay because today is a festival day. Culling can begin tomorrow," said Bijay Kumar, Maharashtra's animal husbandry commissioner.

Large parts of India are closed for a holiday on Wednesday to celebrate Holi, the Hindu spring festival of colors.

NO NEED TO PANIC

Authorities said the area of the second outbreak appeared bigger than the first one, but there was no need to panic.

"There wasn't much commercial poultry activity in this area. We will cull all poultry within a 10-km (6-mile) radius of each of the affected villages," Kumar said.

The first outbreak had resulted in the loss of millions of dollars to the large poultry industry in India where it is estimated that more than half the 1.1 billion population eat chicken.

The bird flu virus has spread rapidly since the beginning of February, killing birds in at least 16 new countries.

Scientists fear it is only a matter of time before the virus mutates into a form that passes easily among people, triggering a pandemic. Millions could die and economies crippled for months if that happens, they say.

Source: REUTERS

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