By IANS
Kolkata/New Delhi : Nine people checked for signs of bird flu in West Bengal were cleared Tuesday, bringing a bit of relief to harried officials grappling with the spread of the epidemic to a seventh district. Two million poultry will have to be culled now, 10 times the number killed in the first week.
“Four (human) samples tested in our Delhi head office have been found negative to avian influenza,” Director of National Institute of Communicable Disease (NICD) Shiv Lal told IANS.
“People should not get worried unnecessarily. All human samples related to bird flu have been found negative and we don’t have any other sample right now,” said Lal. “We have given the report to the central and the state government.”
In the West Bengal capital, the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) also denied reports that the virus had spread to five people.
“The news of a possible viral attack on five humans is totally baseless. The five samples that were sent for laboratory tests in Pune were all negative and we have sent the report to ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research). A section of the media quoted me without actually speaking to me,” agitated NICED scientist Sekhar Chakraborty told IANS.
But the avian crisis continues to escalate.
Central government officials had confirmed Monday night that samples from Malda district’s Chanchol (Block I), about 375 km from Kolkata, had tested positive for bird flu. On Tuesday, the West Bengal government corroborated the report.
“Chanchol is affected by bird flu. The culling operation will begin Tuesday,” West Bengal Animal Husbandry Minister Anisur Rahman told IANS.
With confirmation of the outbreak of bird flu in Malda, now seven districts in the state are in the grip of the deadly viral infection. The six other districts are Birbhum, South Dinajpur, Murshidabad, Nadia, Burdwan and Bankura.
About 200,000 poultry have been culled in West Bengal since Jan 16 to combat the deadly H5N1 strain.
The state had set a target of slaughtering 400,000 poultry but, with the spread of the disease to new areas, the government has decided that at least two million birds should be killed, West Bengal Health Minister Surya Kanta Misra said.
More than a million poultry deaths have been reported in West Bengal in the past three weeks.
The state government has allocated Rs.30 million for compensation to those losing their poultry, Rahman said.
Farmers were being handed over tokens at culling sites and asked to contact their panchayat or village block offices for the money. The payment is Rs.40 for a country chicken, Rs.30 for a broiler and Rs.10 for a chick.
The H5N1 virus causes a type of influenza in birds that is highly contagious and can be deadly. It does not usually infect people unless they come in close contact with infected birds or contaminated surfaces.
Meanwhile in Delhi, speaking on the sideline of the centenary celebrations of the Trained Nurses’ Association of India (TNAI), Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said: “Random screening is being carried out in several bird flu affected districts of West Bengal but no human case has been confirmed so far.”
Several states have banned the import of chicken from West Bengal. The central government has asked the state government to seal its border with neighbouring countries like Bangladesh and Bhutan and directed the state to be on alert over poultry movement across the Bangladesh border.
Ramadoss said several health ministry teams were conducting random screening of people from villages where bird flu has been confirmed or suspected. The screening is being done in 5 km radius around the affected areas, he explained.