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India begins culling birds as H5N1 confirmed

Posted on: Thursday, 16 March 2006, 04:02 CST

By Krittivas Mukherjee

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Veterinary workers began throttling more than 70,000 birds in western India on Thursday as tests confirmed the country's second outbreak of avian influenza in poultry was the deadly H5N1 strain.

"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 (90 cents) 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.

Authorities said the latest outbreak -- in Jalgaon district of Maharashtra -- was the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian influenza that has killed about 100 people, most of them in Asia. There have been no reports of human infections in India.

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, 185 miles from the latest outbreak, have treated nearly 2,000 people in 15 days.

Authorities said they had identified four villages spread over 425 square miles in the Jalgaon area as affected and were killing all birds -- an estimated 70,000 -- within that area.

Jalgaon is 125 miles 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.

"So far, our surveillance teams have not found anyone with flu-like symptoms," Maharashtra health director T.P. Doke said.

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 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.

(Additional reporting by Kamil Zaheer in NEW DELHI)

Source: REUTERS

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