As West Bengal worked on an action plan to contain a suspected outbreak of avian flu in two blocks of Birbhum district, an Agriculture Ministry official in New Delhi today said the “preliminary report is confirmatory (for avian flu). The outbreak will be declared tomorrow once the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (in Bhopal) sends its report on specifics such as identification of the strain.”

While villagers in Birbhum’s affected Margram area feasted on dead birds, unaware why their poultry was dying, Rampurhat Block Medical Officer Abhijit Roychoudhury said: “We have been informed that after primary screening, the H5N1 virus has been identified. We are taking a number of measures. A medical team is being prepared. Already Tamiflu drugs are here. Now it is up to the Union Government to notify the area as affected by H5N1. After notification, we will take action.”

In New Delhi, Union Health Secretary Naresh Dayal said the Ministry has already sent large doses of the preventive Tamiflu drug to the state. “Samples of the dead birds have been sent to the laboratory in Bhopal. The final report has not come yet, but there is an indication that it may be bird flu,” he said, adding that samples have also been sent to the National Institute of Virology, Pune. “If and when we get a confirmation that it is bird flu, that is the deadly H5N1, we will declare an outbreak,” he said.

The Department of Animal Husbandry in the Ministry issued instructions for setting up a control room and dispatched Joint Commissioner A B Negi to Kolkata to coordinate the culling of birds that will start tomorrow. Birbhum and South Dinajpur districts have reported large number of poultry deaths with Rampurhat II in Birbhum reporting 10,800 dead out of 15,000 affected and South Dinajpur reporting 2,964 birds affected, an official said. One state-run poultry farm in South Dinajpur reported 230 deaths out of 247 affected, the official added.

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