February 20, 2006

 

India culls chickens, conducts tests after bird flu outbreak

 

 

Officials in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, are testing for bird flu after 1,400 birds died at a poultry farm.

 

The state is also banning poultry imports from other Indian states and neighbouring Nepal while the tests are underway, said B.P Singh, Uttar Pradesh's state director for animal husbandry.

 

The birds died at a farm in the Etawah district, 250 kilometres southwest of Lucknow, the state capital.

 

The tests follow India's first confirmed outbreak of bird flu among poultry, in another state--Maharashtra, in western India.

 

In that state, more than 50,000 chickens have been culled in the major poultry region of Navapur since early Sunday (Feb 19), said Anees Ahmed, state minister for animal husbandry.

 

"Culling has begun," said Ahmed. "We are taking the help of farm workers also to destroy the poultry."

 

But as a precaution, authorities hospitalised eight people in the area who were suffering flu-like symptoms.

 

"This is just a precaution. There is no indication they have any symptoms of bird flu," said Maharashtra's Chief Secretary Prem Kumar, the state's most senior official.

 

Half a million birds will be slaughtered within a 3-kilometre radius to check the spread of the highly pathogenic virus from the area, more than 400 kilometres northeast of Bombay, officials said.

 

Police have sealed off the area and are preventing people from entering the farms.

 

The government announced an aid package for affected farmers, a day after officials confirmed that at least some of the chickens, of the 30,000 that died in Navapur over the past week, were infected with the H5N1 strain of bird flu.