Fresh bird flu outbreak in West Bengal

Despite government’s strong claim of containing bird flu outbreak in the affected regions, a fresh spate of deadly virus has reportedly been resurfaced in Darjeeling district of West Bengal last day.

The state authorities have confirmed the report and informed that Bora Changa region in Siliguri town has been detected as the epicenter of this epidemic.

‘The culling operation has begun on Sunday on the basis of notification made by the Government and it will take next three to four days to cull the targeted 11,000 poultries in the affected area,’ said Dhruba Chakrabarty, state observer, animal husbandry division.

‘Samples of blood have been sent to High Security Animal Disease Laboratory in Bhopal and buying and selling of birds have been banned within 10 kilometre of the affected area,’ he added.

Since January this year, it is the second time that bird flu outbreak has emerged again in the affected region of West Bengal while the state authorities were continuously claiming to contain this fatal dieses a month ago when the culling operation had ended.

Earlier in January, the culling operation team had culled more than 30,000 poultries in Siliguri and adjacent areas. Besides, hundreds of thousands of birds had been culled in Assam and Meghalaya after the report of first outbreak in northeastern region in November last year.

The first bird flu case had been detected in India in 2006, since then millions of chicken and ducks have been culled to curb the further spread of virus.