#1907
While the state of West Bengal was the focus of the bird flu outbreaks earlier this year in India, the northeastern state of Tripura now takes center stage. Today's announcement comes but a week after the last round of culling was completed in Tripura.
Surrounded on three sides by Bangladesh, and bordered on the east by the Indian states of Assam and Mizoram, Tripura is some distance from West Bengal.
This report from the Vietnam News Agency, which adds some detail to the report I carried yesterday.
India reports second outbreak since early 2008
23/04/2008 -- 5:08 PM
Hanoi (VNA) - The Indian Government on April 23 reported new bird flu outbreaks in northeastern state of Tripura which borders Bangladesh , according to news reports.
Laboratory tests confirmed the presence of the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus in dead chickens in Tripura, confirmed the Director of the state's animal resource department, Ashish Roy Barman.
Tripura is the second state after West Bengal in the country’s east to report an outbreak of avian influenza this year.
The outbreak came just little more than a week after India finished culling thousands of chickens to contain an outbreak of the disease. The new epidemic has forced the mass slaughter of thousands more poultry.
Health officials are visiting homes in the affected areas to check local people’s health although there have been no new reports of human infections since in the first outbreak of deadly disease in 2006.
Checkpoints have been put in place to stop transportation of chickens or poultry products outside the bird-flu zone, the news reports said.- Enditem
