Hundreds of veterinary workers in eastern India will begin killing up to 15,000 chickens and ducks today as authorities tried to contain the latest outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus.
State officials in West Bengal state confirmed the outbreak late yesterday after tests on dead birds. Hundreds of thousands of poultry are already being culled in northeastern Assam state and neighbouring Meghalaya.
Health workers and bird flu experts are monitoring about 100 people in Guwahati city in Assam who had shown signs of the virus. There have been no confirmed human cases of H5N1 in India.
Veterinary workers wearing protective suits would kill and bury at least 15,000 fowl in yards and farms across West Bengal's Malda district, 350 km (220 miles) north of Kolkata, state officials said.
Authorities also imposed a ban on transporting poultry from the affected zones in West Bengal and asked that people cooperate with culling teams.
"There could be some resistance from the villagers, but we have started an awareness campaign to persuade villagers to hand over poultry," said N.K. Shit, a senior animal resources development official.
Local authorities in Malda said at least 3,500 chickens and ducks have died in the past week.
In the neighbouring state of Orissa, authorities said they had banned all poultry products from other states.
Hundreds of veterinary officials and policemen were asked to check vehicles coming in from bordering states, including West Bengal, said senior Orissa government official Bishnupada Sethi.
In Guwahati, health workers, bird flu experts and equipment were rushed in when about 100 people began suffering fever and respiratory infections, symptoms of the H5N1 bird flu virus in humans, after the outbreak was detected there last month.
There have been no confirmed human cases of H5N1 in India since the first outbreak was reported in the western state of Maharashtra in 2006.
But experts fear the H5N1 virus might mutate or combine with the highly contagious seasonal influenza virus and spark a pandemic that could kill millions of people.
Since the virus resurfaced in Asia in 2003, it has killed more than 200 people in a dozen countries, the World Health Organisation (WHO) says.
Yesterday's confirmation marked the third outbreak of the disease this year in West Bengal, where 4 million birds were culled in January in what the WHO has described as India's worst-ever bird flu outbreak.
Bird flu was also detected in poultry in Malda in March, resulting in the culling of more than 50,000 birds. Authorities said in May that the virus had been stamped out in the area.
Reuters