Bird flu scare as chickens die in Jharkhand

     Khunti (Jharkhand)/Ghoti (Maharashtra): Panic has gripped eastern India following the death of chickens under mysterious circumstances in the tribal dominated Khunti area in Jharkhand, 40 kilometres away from state capital Ranchi. Local have said that birds have started dying all of a sudden, in most households. Durga Ram, a poultry owner in Khunti said the birds died suddenly. "I had around 1000 chickens out of which 700-800 have died. The birds died all of a sudden even as they were having proper food," said Ram.

     In Maharashtra, health officials said on Sunday, that a doctor with fever and respiratory problems has been kept under observation. Late on Saturday, the doctor walked into a local hospital and asked to be put under observation, joining an 11-year-old boy with high fever and a history of exposure to dead birds. Tens of thousands of birds have been culled in the state to contain a second outbreak of the deadly avian flu. The latest outbreak -- in the backyard poultry in Maharashtra's Jalgaon district -- was the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu, but it has not infected people so far. In Khunti and Ghoti, poultry owners said their chickens were dying even as officials did not confirm bird flu but said that they were conducting tests and waiting for results. "Fifteen of my chickens have died, three each have died for the past three days under mysterious circumstances," said Ramdas, a local resident of Ghoti village in Maharashtra. "As soon as we got the information through the media, we sent samples for test. We found out that some chicks were bought from outside and some have died. It's still not large spread but we have sent samples for test and we will take necessary measures," said Kameshwar Prasad, Subdivisional Officer, Khunti. Health officials said they were monitoring 65,000 people spread over 17 villages in Maharashtra's Jalgaon district. Of them, some 150 people had fever, but authorities said the figure was normal. Blood samples of about 90 people from Jalgaon had been sent for testing, but officials said that was purely out of "academic curiosity". Veterinary officials said they had finished culling all chickens -- numbering more than 75,000 -- in four villages spread over 1,100 square kms in Jalgaon district identified as affected by the outbreak. Samples from unaffected poultry elsewhere in Maharashtra were being collected to ensure bird flu had not spread beyond Jalgaon. Jalgaon is just 200 kilometres away from Navapur, where India reported its first case of the H5N1 strain in poultry last month. After the first outbreak, India tested more than 100 people for bird flu but all proved negative. Authorities last week said, they had contained the virus after culling hundreds of thousands of chickens in Navapur and neighbouring areas, but within days, the second outbreak was reported from Jalgaon.

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