Bird-flu outbreak hits India

An outbreak of bird flu has killed at least 25,000 birds in eastern India , officials said today.

“It has been confirmed and we have instructed district health officials to start culling from tomorrow,” said Anisur Rahman, minister of animal husbandry with the state of West Bengal.

Mr Rahman said health teams were sent to the affected area in Birbhum district, nearly 160 miles from the state capital of Calcutta.

India confirmed an outbreak of the potentially deadly H5N1 in western India in 2006, but declared itself bird flu free after slaughtering hundreds of thousands of chickens. No human cases were reported. A smaller outbreak in north-eastern India was contained last year.

The H5N1 virus has afflicted more than 60 countries, forcing the slaughter of hundreds of millions of birds since it began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003.

It is now entrenched in several countries, including Indonesia, Egypt and Nigeria, and has killed at least 206 people worldwide.

The virus remains hard for people to catch, but experts fear it will mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, potentially sparking a pandemic. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.