Reuters Posted online: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 at 1751 hours IST
Mumbai, March 8: The health officials said on Wednesday they have contained an outbreak of bird flu in poultry, but the virus was still present in bird waste two weeks after the first cases were reported.
India has culled about 500,000 birds, destroyed 1.3 million eggs and launched a mass clean-up campaign in and around Navapur, where the country's first and only H5N1 cases in chickens were reported last month.
After the poultry outbreak, almost 100 human blood samples were tested for the flu virus. All tested negative.
"The virus now remains only in the environment, in some bird droppings and feathers," T P Doke, Health Director of Maharashtra, where Navapur is located, said. The virus was also present in chicken feed around the infected area, he added.
"We are working on a war-footing to bury or burn the poultry dirt," h said.
In Navapur, veterinary workers wearing protective gear were using heavy machinery as well as spades to dispose of hundreds of tonnes of bird waste by burying it in pits or by burning.
"It will take another four to five days for all the dirt to be disposed of," Doke said, adding that the town's drainage system, which is clogged with poultry waste, was also being cleaned.
Officials said the bird flu virus had not spread to poultry in any other part of the country and worries about infected chicken were unfounded.
"It is safe to eat chicken because the bird flu outbreak has been contained and there is no infection in poultry anywhere," Maharastra's Animal Husbandry Minister Anees Ahmed said.
But the authorities' assurance has failed to convince many.
Sales of chicken have crashed to almost half of the normal level, reflecting tough times for the poultry industry.
Chicken is a staple for meat-eaters in India as beef and pork are largely shunned for religious reasons or quality concerns.
Restaurants, hotels, airlines and even government establishments pulled chicken from their menus after the flu outbreak, but parliament and the army have reversed their bans in the past few days as fears over avian influenza have eased.
The Indian government has taken out an advertisement campaign in newspapers, splashing photos of a well-cooked full chicken, surrounded by vegetables and a half-cut boiled egg.
"Isn't it tempting? So go for it," the advertisement reads with the punchline saying, 'Cook well and eat a lot'.
The bird flu virus has spread rapidly since the beginning of February, killing birds in at least 16 new countries. The virus has killed 96 people globally since 2003.
Scientists fear it is only a matter of time before the virus mutates into a form that passes easily among people, triggering a pandemic. Millions could die and economies crippled for months.
