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With elections just a month away in West Bengal, elected officials are reportedly interfering with the culling and containment efforts, feeling that they intimidate and alienate voters.
With the avian flu outbreaks of January and February still not completely under control, the fear is that this laxity will lead to further outbreaks.
This report comes from The Times of India which rarely misses a chance to lambaste the political machinery of West Bengal.
Poll fever hits flu ops in Bengal
12 Apr 2008, 0239 hrs IST,
NEW DELHI: The upcoming panchayat elections in West Bengal may spell doom for the state's bird flu control and containment operations.
A central team from the department of animal husbandry, which recently returned from West Bengal, reported that culling operations had already started to suffer due to the election preparations.
Instances have been recorded of local officials found asking culling teams not to stop villagers in infected districts from repopulating poultry, and even asking them not to take away the villagers' chicken for culling.
Sources told TOI that state officials in districts like Birbhum, Burdwan, Malda and Murshidabad didn't want to intimidate villagers by taking away their birds. This, they said, would alienate their vote banks during the elections slated to be held on May 11, 14 and 18.
"Because the panchayat elections are a prelude to the general elections, the state's administrative machinery may devote all their time in it, seriously hampering bird flu containment operations. We are seriously worried because the H5N1 virus is still in circulation in the state. Over four districts have already reported reinfection.
Repopulation and infiltration have already started in several districts," an official said.
The revelation comes just days after UN issued its gravest warning to India since bird flu first broke out in 2006, saying the virus may have got entrenched in the Indo-Gangetic plains of India and Bangladesh.
UN's influenza coordinator David Nabarro said an entrenched virus would mean a longer time to stamp it out, higher risk of continuous reinfections and a greater cost — both financial and human for the infected country.
Health minister A Ramadoss, too, recently, wrote a strongly worded letter to agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, over West Bengal's slack containment efforts. Ramadoss said the risk of human infection remained high in the state because of the latter's failure in controlling repopulation and reinfection.
Officials believe that smuggling of poultry, for trade, from bird flu free districts of West Bengal into the affected districts, caused the H5N1 virus to resurface in the state.
According to the avian influenza control and containment protocol, no repopulation of poultry is allowed in an infected district at least three months from the time culling teams complete disinfection operations.
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