New Delhi, Jan 22, IRNA ,Indian government has allayed fears of bird flu spreading to human beings in West Bengal, saying random testing of people in the affected areas has been carried out and all such samples have tested negative.
“It is a general thing that if anybody has any fever or anything like that the blood will be tested and till date we have not got any confirmation for that (bird flu),” Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss told reporters on the sidelines of a function in New Delhi.
The minister said that the screening is conducted between 0-10 km of the affected area and all people who live in the villages are randomly tested by health ministry teams.
“Till date we have not had any confirmation of that and there is no reason to be concerned of any cases of human cases of bird flu,” he said adding, “We are all vigilant.”
According to an Indian National TV news portal report, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) which as a part of the Union Health Ministry is responsible for carrying out the screening today said that all five human samples taken from West Bengal have tested negative.
“In fact the samples which were taken from South Dinajpur and Birbhum did not have any clinical symptoms of the disease and did not even fit the definition of suspect cases,” NICD Director Shivlal said.
Speaking about a delay in action on part of the state government, he said that the pace of culling operations should be quickened.
“Initially there was a delay of nearly a week’s time for notices to be sent to us but now things have been put on track,” Ramadoss said.
Asked whether the delay could have contributed to the disease spreading so fast, he said, “It could have been handled better.” “When it happened in Maharashtra and Manipur, within a week we could take care of these things and it was mopped up and the screening was done and culling was done,” the minister said adding the pace of all operations like culling needs to be quickened.
With a raised target to cull 20 lakh chicken in the next seven days, expert teams are out in all the seven districts of West Bengal on Tuesday which have reported bird flu, official sources said.
“The culling target was raised to 20 lakh chicken after the blood samples sent from Malda district tested positive of the bird flu virus Monday,” sources said.
The outbreak has so far affected seven districts in West Bengal — Birbhum, Murshidabad, South Dinajpur, Burdwan, Nadia, Bankura and Malda.
Around two lakh chicken would be culled in Malda district alone with around 135 culling teams to be constituted for the purpose, sources said.
In Birbhum district, two trucks carrying chicken bound for Jharkhand were detained today at Nalhati as the government has banned movement of poultry from bird flu-affected districts, they said.
South Dinajpur District Magistrate S Chattapadhyay said that the bloods samples sent from Gangarampur to Central laboratories have tested negative, which shows that the disease has not spread to new areas.
He also said that yesterday around 71,000 chicken were culled and 61,000 eggs destroyed.
Around Rs 11 lakh has been paid as compensation to the affected traders, the DM said.
Meanwhile, bird flu scare is looming large over North 24 Parganas district too with reports of chicken deaths pouring in from three areas bordering flu-affected Nadia district.
Nearly 1.6 lakh poultry birds have been culled so far while over one lakh birds have succumbed to the disease.