Bird flu strikes Eastern India yet again as culling operations begin

By Dr. Ananya Mandal, MDSep 21 2011

On Tuesday, the federal government in India announced that it had ordered poultry farms in the eastern part of the country to cull chickens and destroy eggs to rein in an new outbreak of bird flu. 

“Around 51,000 hens and ducks will be culled within a 3-km radius of the affected zone,” said A K Agarwal, secretary of the ARD department. Besides culling, surveillance will continue within a 10-km radius of the affected area.

On September 14, unnatural deaths of 849 fowls on a single day were reported to the local animal resources development wing. The next day, samples were sent for test where it was confirmed to be bird flu. To re-confirm the tests, samples were sent again to Bhopal's High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL) where it tested positive for the H5 strain of avian influenza.

On Monday, both the Centre and the state issued notifications, declaring the epidemic as bird flu and culling was ordered. Culling started across the five affected areas only after 4 pm on Tuesday. According to The ARD secretary informed that the 3-km radius within which culling has to be done includes a portion of Bangladesh. So, The Centre was requested to talk it out with Bangladesh to take up the issue with the neighboring country so that a similar exercise is conducted over this area as well.

Chowdhury, suspects migratory birds may be behind the outbreak this time. “There is a huge waterbody in Tehatta which is flocked by migratory birds around this time of the year. They may have brought the virus.”

A mutant strain of avian influenza - for which there is no vaccine - appeared recently in China and Vietnam. But Indian authorities did not specify which strain of the H5N1 virus had been detected in the West Bengal region, which has been a hot spot for avian flu in the past. If it spreads to humans, bird flu can cause fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, eye infections, pneumonia, respiratory disease and occasionally death.

Bird flu first broke out in India in 2006 and millions of chickens and ducks have been culled since to contain the virus, but it has resurfaced from time to time.