India culls birds, hunts for flu in humans

By Krittivas Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) – Veterinary workers began throttling more
than 70,000 birds in western India on Thursday, stepping up
efforts to contain a second outbreak of avian influenza in
poultry.

“There is no time for niceties. The birds have to be killed
as fast as possible,” said Bijay Kumar, animal husbandry
commissioner of the state of Maharashtra, where bird flu
resurfaced this week in backyard poultry.

Veterinary and civic workers wearing protective gear moved
door-to-door collecting chickens and eggs after paying owners
40 rupees (0.5 pounds) for every bird as compensation. Eggs
went free.

The birds had their necks twisted and were then stuffed in
black plastic bags and buried in shallow pits. Disinfectants
and lime powder were then sprinkled over the graves.

“We hope the culling will be over by tomorrow,” Kumar said.

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

Health authorities said they were not taking any chances
and had sent dozens of medical teams looking for people with
flu-like symptoms to every household of the affected area.

Hundreds of people in a nearby area have complained of
fever. Doctors say they are most likely suffering from dengue
fever, a mosquito-borne disease — but they have sent blood
samples for bird flu tests anyway.

Hospitals in Malegaon, 140 km from the latest outbreak,
have treated nearly 2,000 people in 15 days.

Authorities said they had identified four villages spread
over 1,100 square km in the Jalgaon area as affected and were
killing all birds — an estimated 70,000 — within that area.

Jalgaon is 200 km from Navapur, where India reported its
first case of the H5N1 strain last month. Authorities said last
week they had contained the virus there after culling hundreds
of thousands of chickens.

After the first outbreak, India tested more than 100 people
for bird flu but all proved negative.

RESTRICT MOVEMENT

One health official said his department would cover 17
villages in Jalgaon checking for flu cases in humans.

Vijay Satbir Singh, Maharashtra’s top health official, said
isolation wards had been kept ready in local hospitals should
there be a need to quarantine people.

Authorities restricted movement of traffic through the four
affected villages.

“We want as little contact as possible with these villages
to preclude any possibility of the infection spreading,”
Jalgaon’s administrative chief, Vijay Singhal, said.

Earlier, television showed dead chickens lying on a road in
Jalgaon and children in the affected areas playing with
domestic poultry.

The first outbreak cost the poultry industry more than $120
million (69 million pounds) in just two weeks. Roughly half
India’s 1.1 billion people eat chicken.

The bird flu virus has spread rapidly since the beginning
of February, moving deeper into Europe, Africa and Asia.

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 would
be crippled if that happens, they say.