Neighbouring states sounded war cry against bird flu even as culling of poultry birds continued for the second day on Friday in Manipur where incidence of avian influenza in a small poultry firm in Imphal East district was confirmed couple of days back.
According to information gleaned from the bird flu control room in Imphal, a large number of birds were culled on Friday and it will take few more days to achieve the target.
The Manipur state veterinary department has ordered culling of 1.5 lakh poultry birds with 500 meters radius of the bird flu detection site in Chingmeirong.
Meanwhile, blood samples of about 200 chickens that died in Churachandpur district in Manipur over the last three weeks were sent for test to find presence of bird flu virus strain, if any.
However, state veterinary officials suspected that the deaths were due to some bacterial infection given that rests of the stock in the area have been found healthy. The 200 odd chickens were from small household poultry units.
Neighbouring states
in the region have taken steps against possible out break of bird flu in the wake of developments in Manipur.
The state government in Mizoram has imposed ban on import of poultry products from Manipur and neighbouring Myanmar and Bangladesh, according to a source in Mizoram.
Assam government has issued instructions to district administrations to check importing poultry birds, eggs and other products to the state from other states and neighbouring countries where incidence of avian influenza were reported.
Assam veterinary department is 65 well-equipped rapid response teams manned by over 300 doctors and para-veterinary staffs to face the situation in case outbreak of bird flu.
However, the good news for Assam is that there is no cause for worry at this moment given that all the blood and faecal collected from poultry stock in the state and sent for laboratory test in the central laboratory in Bhopal and Regional Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Kolkata since 2005 have been tested negative for bird flu virus.