Bird Flu
‘Massive outbreak’ feared in NE
500 chicken die in UP

Kolkata, January 30
Fresh poultry deaths were reported today from a private farm in South 24-Parganas triggering fears that the H5N1 virus might be spreading to the organised sector after affecting backyard chicken.

Official sources said in South 24-Parganas, where there had been no instance of avian flu earlier, 250 chicken died this morning at a private poultry farm under Maheshtala municipality. Altogether 4,000 chicken deaths had been reported from a private farm in Baduria yesterday. Blood samples have been collected from the farm situated at Benerpukur, health officials said.

Culling operations continued in Budge Budge in the district from where a large number of chicken deaths were earlier reported. In North 24-Parganas culling has been taken up in Baduria, Swarupnagar and Habra blocks on “symptomatic evidence”, district magistrate Prabhat Mitra said today.

Culling in the backyard poultry and in poultry farms has been taken up in a radius of five km of the affected areas in the three blocks, the DM said.

In Birbhum district from where avian influenza was first reported in the state on January 15, culling is being taken up today in Suri-I block, official sources said. So far 8 lakh chicken have been culled in the district, the sources said.

A report from Hooghly district said a three-member team from the union health ministry, led by Dr B.C. Jain, today visited areas of Balagarh and Mogra blocks from where poultry deaths have been reported. District magistrate Vinod Kumar today said the culling target in the district had been completed.

Meanwhile, panic gripped Arambagh sub-division in the district where the state’s largest hatchery farm, Arambangh Hatcheries, is situated, official sources said.

Meanwhile, with avian flu spreading fast in West Bengal, panic gripped Meghalaya today following a prediction by researchers about a possible “massive outbreak” of the disease in the north-east.

A “prediction map” prepared by research associate Dr Dibyendu Adhikari and Arun Chettri of the Department of Botany, North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), which was made public today, claimed that some areas in the region were vulnerable to the H5N1 virus.

Though the map covers potential risk zones of bird flu in almost all north-eastern states, including Assam, Tripura, Manipur and Mizoram, the hilly areas in Meghalaya, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh have been identified as low-risk zones.

In Uttar Pradesh 500 chicken have died in two poultry farms in Chitrapar and Devpar villages of the district in the last five days with the administration attributing the deaths to severe cold in the region. — PTI