India Reports First Bird Flu Case
Saturday, February 18, 2006
BOMBAY, India — India reported its first case of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu on Saturday after chickens were found to have died from the virus. A man in Indonesia also died from the disease, that country's 19th death, officials said.
Indian officials will immediately begin slaughtering hundreds of thousands of birds in a 1.5-mile radius around the poultry farms in the western town of Navapur, where the confirmed cases were detected, Anees Ahmed, the Maharashtra state minister for animal husbandry, told The Associated Press.
"Around 500,000 birds will be killed," he said. "It is confirmed the deaths were caused by the H5N1 strain."
At least 30,000 chickens have died in Navapur, a major poultry-farming region of Maharashtra state, over the past two weeks, Ahmed said.
Officials initially believed the birds had died of Newcastle Disease, another deadly bird illness, but further tests revealed that bird flu was responsible.
Bird flu has killed at least 91 people — most in Asia — since 2003, according to World Health Organization figures updated through Monday.
Most victims have been directly infected by sick birds, but scientists fear the H5N1 virus could mutate to a form easily passed between humans and spark a human flu pandemic.
The Indonesian man died on Feb. 10 at a hospital in Jakarta. He had frequently been in contact with poultry, said Hariadi Wibisono, a Health Ministry official.
The death brings Indonesia's official toll from the virus to 19. The only country with more human deaths is Vietnam, with 42.
Minister of Health Affairs Siti Fadilah Supari said Saturday the government will boost its stockpile of anti-viral drug Tamiflu to four million pills in the next two months and 10 million by the end of the year.
Bird flu is becoming more virulent in Indonesia, Agriculture Minister Anton Apriyantono warned Wednesday.
He said that people were now "dying quicker" when they contracted the virus and that incidences of human cases were increasing.
"This likely means the virus is getting more ferocious," Apriyantono said.
He gave no data to back up his assertions, but World Health Organization figures for this year show eight human cases of bird flu in Indonesia, eight of which were fatal.
In 2005, there were 17 cases and 11 deaths, according to the group.
Egypt's agriculture minister said Saturday the number of cases of bird flu in the country were not high enough to warrant large-scale culling of poultry yet, but that authorities would act accordingly if the disease spreads.
The government on Friday announced the country's first cases of H5N1 — seven cases in three provinces.
"The disease is not at a level that leads to getting rid of large numbers" of fowl, Amin Abaza told the Arabic-language Al-Arabiya satellite channel. "There are known international measures that are taken. Poultry within a certain radius get culled."
He said those who work at the poultry farms were already trained and familiar with safety measures. Authorities were trying to spread awareness among families that raise poultry at home, he told Al-Arabiya.
"This came as no surprise. We have been preparing for this for a while," Abaza said of the disease.
In Germany, another 28 wild birds have been diagnosed with the deadly H5N1 bird flu on a north German island, an official said Saturday, bringing the total to 41.
Germany's first cases of bird flu were detected among dead swans and a hawk on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen earlier this week.
AI
