Print

Mail

wiki links

Wild birds blamed for spread of deadly avian flu into India

India's best efforts to prevent the spread of bird flu were likely foiled by wild birds, the director of the laboratory spearheading the fight against exotic diseases said yesterday.

As the migratory bird season neared its end, the Indian government on Saturday confirmed the first cases of bird flu on a poultry farm in the western state of Maharashtra.

"That [migration] is the only source through which it could come, I believe, though I have nothing to prove that," H.K. Pradhan, director of the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory said.

India, which had banned poultry imports from countries with bird flu, had increased testing of avian samples from November as wild birds from affected countries such as China migrated through the subcontinent.

"In one week we test more than 1,000. Earlier, we were testing only 1,000 a month," Pradhan said.

"We were thinking that if it doesn't come [by the second week of March] it will not come this year," he said.

But on Feb. 11, the Bhopal laboratory was rushed 12 samples after thousands of birds died at a chicken farm in Nawapur district. Eight proved to be positive for the H5N1 subtype of bird flu.

Health officials launched a cull on Sunday but only 20,000 of an estimated half a million birds on farms near the small town of Navapur in Maharashtra were slaughtered.

As surrounding states went on high alert, speeding samples to the Bhopal lab to be tested, scientists there have been swamped with work.

"I have not slept for the last three to four days," Pradhan said.

"Our lab has the greatest role because every sample has been coming here," he said.

The laboratory boasts of being one of just 10 high-security disease facilities in the world and the only one in Asia.

"It was good we could diagnose it as rapidly as possible. I know that even in advanced countries the diagnosis can be two weeks," Pradhan, an expert in avian diseases said.

"Here we have done it in five to six days so India is not lagging behind," he said.

also see story:
Bird flu continues spread across Europe and beyond

This story has been viewed 1537 times.