Bird flu spreads to 10 states, govt says human threat low
Union minister says no scientific reports on transmission of bird flu to humans
NEW DELHI: Bird flu spread to 10 states on Monday with Delhi, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand confirming the viral outbreak, which experts said would be difficult to control because a large number of birds in the wild had been infected.
The Centre moved to ease concerns of the infection spreading to humans through contaminated meat or chicken, saying that in India the disease had been spread mainly by migratory birds and added that secondary spread to poultry had occurred only at a few places.
“There are no scientific reports on transmission of bird flu to humans and consumers should not be scared,” minister for fisheries, animal husbandry and dairy Giriraj Singh told reporters on Monday, asking the states not to close wholesale markets or restrict the sale of poultry products.
Delhi, Maharashtra and Uttarakhand joined Himachal Pradesh, where close to 4,000 migratory birds have died in Pong Dam, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Haryana in confirming bird flu cases.
While transmission of the virus to humans is rare, it easily spreads among birds through droppings. “The entire water body gets infected with the virus, a reason for so many birds dying in Pong Dam in Himachal. Also, it spreads the disease from one species to another,” said Suresh Kumar, a scientist with the Wildlife Institute of India and migratory bird expert.
Migratory birds reach India at wintering sites through the Central Asian flyway, which extends from the Artic in the north to Maldives in the south and from central China in the east to eastern Europe in the west. It is one of the eight major migratory bird flyways and least studied among all, said a report in Birdlife International, a global partnership of non-government organisations devoted to avian conservation.
Asad Rahmani, former director of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), said the birds from Central Asia, China, Mongolia and Siberia cover more than 5,000 kms to reach hundreds of wintering sites in the Indian subcontinent and some of them even fly to Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Sri Lanka.
Close to 90% of the 370 identified species in the CAF reach the Indian subcontinent and spread across the country. “You can find Bar-headed Goose in Kaziranga and Pong Dam. They may enter India through two ends of Tibetan plateau. They are of same species but represent different populations,” Kumar said.
Rahmani said some of these migratory birds may be carriers of bird flu although they may not perish. Not much research has been done on bird diseases, and it would not be possible to say which birds carry which strain of bird flu, he added.
Testing by Bhopal-based National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases indicates that both strains of bird flu came from migratory birds. H5N8, a sub-type of the influenza found in poultry and wild animals, has been found in crows in Rajasthan, Uttarkhand and Madhya Pradesh. The other strain is H5N1, found in ducks in Kerala and the Bar-headed Goose in Himachal.