Bird flu spreads rapidly through western Bengal
New Delhi (AsiaNews) - The authorities are unable to contain the epidemic of bird flu that has struck poultry stocks in western Bengal. The contagion has extended to the district of Bankura, while there are also massive poultry fatalities in the districts of Darjeeling and Cooch Behar. Although the epidemic has been confirmed by the Laboratory for Animal Epidemics in Bhopal, in many villages the population is blocking the culling of birds.
In Bankura, 30 groups were sent to eliminate the chickens in the affected zones of Khargram, Barwan, Nabagram, and Nawda. The culling of birds is already underway in the other 5 districts that have been struck: Birbhum, south Dinajpur, Murshidabad, Nadia, and Burdwan. In Kolkata last week, 122,000 birds were killed.
The government confirmed the epidemic on January 15, and immediately closed the borders with Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan. It has sent 60 rapid response groups to carry out immediate measures, and has sent experts to inspect the nearby states of Jharkhand and Bihar. At the beginning, the epidemic seemed limited to the districts of Birbhum and south Dinajpur, especially in the backyard coops. But in the following days the inhabitants of many villages opposed the killing of their poultry, a normal measure adopted to contain the contagion. The residents closed access roads and sometimes erupted into violence against the intervention teams. Anisur Rahman, western Bengal's minister for animal resources, has admitted that the culling has been suspended in a number of areas. Near the village of Margram, the epicentre of the contagion, the owners of the largest poultry farm have shut down the access roads and blocked the killing of their 30,000 chickens. In many villages, when the officials arrived the inhabitants brought their chickens inside their homes.
Meanwhile, in Kolkata sales of chickens have fallen by more than a half, and many of the airlines no longer serve chicken.
The inhabitants are asking for immediate compensation for the animals killed, in spite of the fact that Rahman has guaranteed the allocation of about 30 million rupees to reimburse them.
In India, the virus previously struck the district of Nandurbar in the state of Maharashtra in 2006, and the district of western Imphal in Manipur state in July of 2007. In both cases, the contagion remained limited to small areas. The authorities say that the infection comes from the poor regions bordering on Bangladesh and Myanmar, which have trouble containing the outbreak. The country has never suffered human infections. In recent days, in the Jessore region in Bangladesh, in the southern coastal district of Barishal on the Bengali border, the authorities have killed about 1,700 chickens to contain the infection.
Meanwhile, on January 16 the World Health Organisation, after studying the 350 official human infections in 14 countries since 2003 (with 217 deaths), has admitted the for about 25% of the infections "the cause has not been identified", and that it is possible that the transmission of the virus did not take place through birds, but "from the environment", for example through fertilisers made from bird droppings.
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17/08/2004
