April 7, 2006

 

India plans new cull after bird flu found in 14 more villages

 

 

About 200,000 chickens will be slaughtered in and around 14 villages in western India where poultry has tested positive for bird flu, authorities said Friday (Apr 7).

 

The birds were infected with the H5 type of bird flu, but it was not yet clear whether they had the virulent H5N1 strain, said Maharashtra state animal husbandry official S.M. Ali. In spite of this, authorities will still kill all chickens within 10 kilometres of each of the 14 villages, he said.

 

The positive samples were mostly from small, backyard chicken farms in the Jalgaon district in western Maharashtra state, where an outbreak of the H5-type virus was detected last month, said Bijay Kumar, the state's chief of animal husbandry.

 

Jalgaon is more than 170 kilometres east of Nandurbar, the center of India's first outbreak of H5N1 in February.

 

Kumar said the new positive results came from a batch of about 1,000 samples taken last month from 100 villages scattered across Jalgaon. The samples were tested at a federal laboratory.

 

Results from 49 villages were negative and results are still awaited from 37 more. Kumar said health workers suspected samples from several more villages would be positive.

 

"This is a not a new outbreak, but from samples sent last month," he said, adding that the government had decided not to wait for reports of unusual bird deaths to start testing.

 

Since farmers usually do not file reports of unusual chicken deaths, authorities have begun testing samples from all areas around the outbreak.

 

Some 200,000 chickens were killed in Jalgaon last month as a preventive measure, Ali said, adding that a similar number would now be slaughtered because of the new positive test results.

 

India reported another outbreak of bird flu in central Madhya Pradesh state last month, but there have been no human cases of bird flu detected in the country.