India slaughters more chickens in bird flu scare

Health workers slaughtered thousands of chickens in dozens of western Indian villages today to contain the country’s second bird flu outbreak, a senior official said.

Four chickens in the Jalgaon district of Maharashtra state tested positive for the H5 strain of bird flu, and authorities were still awaiting the results of tests to determine if they had the virulent H5N1 variety of the disease.

Some 250 workers were taking part in the cull of about 75,000 chickens, and D.K. Shankaran, the state’s chief secretary, said the slaughter would be completed Friday.

Last month, India suffered its first outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain, and news of the latest outbreak emerged earlier this week.

“There is no sense of panic. Work is being carried out in a systematic manner,” Shankaran said. “We were able to limit the spread last month and will do the same again.”

It’s not clear whether the outbreaks are related. Jalgaon is about 500 kilometres (310 miles) north of Bombay and more than 170 kilometres (105 miles) east of Nandurbar, where the first outbreak was centred.

Apart fro slaughtering birds, workers will also clear bird droppings and other waste in Jalgaon over the next two weeks, Shankaran said.

Bird flu has killed or prompted the culling of more than 140 million chickens and ducks across Asia since 2003, and has recently spread to Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Concerns over the global spread of the disease were heightened again this week when the Caucasus nation of Azerbaijan reported three people killed by the virus. It also has killed 98 other people in Asia, the Middle East and Turkey since 2003, according to the World Health Organisation.

Although most human infections have been traced to direct contact with sick birds, WHO is worried the virus could mutate into form that is easily spread among people. The more regions affected, the higher the chance of this, experts say.

India has not reported any human cases of bird flu.