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As the North Eastern Indian state of Assam enters its 3rd week combating bird flu, new reports of major bird die offs are coming from the Malda district of West Bengal to their west.
The city of Malda (aka English Bazar) - in the district of Malda - lies across the Brahmaputra river, roughly 385 kilometers to the WSW of Guwahati, where cullers have been actively destroying infected poultry for better than a week.
Malda was one of the hardest hit areas of West Bengal during the massive bird flu outbreak that began in December of 2007, and ran through April of 2008.
Today, the Indian press is reporting on the sudden deaths of as many as 5000 birds over the past week, in and around the city of Malda. Testing is underway, and while no positive determination on the cause of these deaths has been announced, many locals suspect bird flu.
The reference in the article below to the gram panchayat - who have written the district administration asking for swift action - refers to elected village-level governing bodies. There are more than 250,000 gram panchayats in India.
A hat tip to Shiloh on Flutrackers for this article from Express India.
5,000 chicken die in Malda, fear of bird flu grips Bengal again
Express News Service
Posted: Dec 15, 2008 at 0335 hrs ISTKolkata Within a year, the fear of bird flu has returned to stalk West Bengal. The death of over 5,000 poultry in Narhatta under English Bazar police station area in Malda in the last few weeks has alarmed the authorities.
Teams from the state Health and Animal Husbandry departments have collected blood samples and sent them to High Security Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Bhopal for tests. “We are awaiting the results,” said Anisur Rehman, state Minister for Animal Resource Development (ARD). “There is no cause for panic. We are doing the needful,” he added.
Learning from the past, when the state government had come under severe criticism for the delay in containing the spread of the virus, the administration is cautious this time. Moreover, the outbreak of the disease in neighbouring Assam has kept the administration on alert.
“We are yet to declare an outbreak since a confirmation is awaited, but as a precaution our teams are ready for an operation,” said Nikhil Kumar Sit, deputy director of Animal Husbandry in Malda. For the last four days, reports of abnormal death of a large number of poultry have started pouring in from the Narhatta Gram Panchayat area. “I woke up on Saturday to find all my 110 birds dead. I do not know what happened to them,” said Edani Bibi, a resident of Narhata.
Meanwhile, the gram panchayat members have already written to the district administration regarding the situation. Husanara Begum, a member of the panchayat said, “We have written to the district administration to take immediate steps. We are sure it is bird flu.”
In January this year, when bird flu broke out in Birbhum district and quickly spread to almost all districts of both north and south Bengal, over two lakh birds were culled in Malda alone.
Apart from initiating culling operations, the state government had ordered a blanket ban of the sale and movement of poultry in the affected districts. It was estimated that the state lost Rs 500 crore due to the outbreak of the disease.
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