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Bird flu on the spread

India has isolated 26 people with bird flu symptoms and hundreds more are being monitored.

Bird flu on the spread

India has isolated 26 people with bird flu symptoms and hundreds more are being monitored. India has not reported any human infection of the H5N1 bird flu virus in its four outbreaks of avian influenza since 2006. But this is considered the worst outbreak of avian influenza in India, which has spread to 13 of West Bengal's 19 districts. The preliminary tests for bird flu are negative, but more tests are being conducted and the list of sick people reviewed every day, said a senior health official. In Pakistan, authorities said bird flu had been detected at a poultry farm on the outskirts of its biggest city, Karachi. However, there was no likelihood of any human infection. The workers on the farm as well as another one adjacent to it are being monitored according to an official of the Sindh provincial government. In Thailand, the virus has been found in a second province in the north. Tests also confirmed the outbreak in Phichit, 215 miles north of Bangkok, where about 30 village chickens died last week. There were four outbreaks in Thailand last year, but no new reports of human infections in the country where H5N1 has killed 17 people since 2003. In Indonesia, 102 people have died of the disease. In the latest case, the health ministry said that a woman who had lived near a poultry slaughterhouse on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta died of multiple-organ failure. The woman, 31 years, is the seventh person to die of bird flu in Indonesia this year, and some experts say the flare-up is caused by a combination of factors such as rainy weather and poor sanitation. In West Bengal, 2.6 million birds have been culled. The focus now is on hundreds of medical and veterinary workers and villagers who had come into close contact with dead or sick birds. Officials said health staff returning home after the culling operation had been asked to get themselves checked. Dozens of isolation wards had been created in hospitals in the affected districts to handle any sudden rush of suspected human cases. Livestock officials said bird flu has spread to nearly half of the country's 64 districts, and was still spreading and had resurfaced in the Feni district, southeast of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The government has ordered culling of all chickens and ducks in one-kilometre radius around affected farms. The virus is threatening the livelihoods of millions of people reliant on the country's poultry industry and driving up food prices. Chicken prices in markets in the capital dropped 25 per cent over the past two weeks, while the price of eggs has fallen 20 per cent or more. Bird flu has also meant trouble for parts of India's poultry business. Egg exports from the world's second largest producer have dropped about 50 per cent in the past two weeks, leaving the industry with losses of around $ 20 million.
Reuters Health,
February 2008
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