# 1855
Well, that's the concern expressed by Dr. David Nabarro of the United Nations.
As we've seen before in other nations, once bird flu outbreaks spread beyond isolated incidents, they becomes exceedingly difficult to contain.
With new outbreaks in West Bengal, and now North-Eastern India, and with ongoing outbreaks in neighboring Bangladesh, the virus may well become entrenched in the region. And as Indonesia, Egypt, and Vietnam have discovered, once established, the virus can be very persistent.
This from The Times of India.
Bird flu virus may have got entrenched in India: UN
10 Apr 2008, 0402 hrs IST,
NEW DELHI: In its gravest warning to India since bird flu first broke out in Maharashtra in 2006, the United Nations has said that the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus may have got entrenched in the Indo-Gangetic plains of India and Bangladesh.
While West Bengal is grappling with the H5N1 virus that has re-infected poultry in the four districts of Nadia, Malda, Murshidabad and Jalpaiguri, 47 of Bangladesh's 64 districts are also reeling under a similar outbreak.
Speaking to TOI from New York, UN’s influenza coordinator Dr David Nabarro said the new outbreaks in India and the continuous circulation of the virus in Bangladesh had started to worry him. He said that with high chances of the virus getting entrenched in the Gangetic plains of West Bengal, the fear of a possible human pandemic remained high.
According to him, an entrenched virus would mean a longer time to stamp it out, higher risk of continuous re-infections and a greater cost — both financial and human — for the infected country. Entrenched viruses not only put the host country, but also neighbouring or distant nations at permanent risk of incursion.
"In light of the continuous re-infections in West Bengal and new outbreak in Tripura, there is a serious possibility that the virus is becoming entrenched in the Gangetic delta. I am seriously concerned about it. This is not something India should take lightly," Nabarro said.
He said entrenched viruses would be a threat to the entire country and would cause sporadic outbreaks at regular intervals. It would multiply freely among poultry, keeping alive the risk of a human pandemic.
Reacting to Dr Nabarro’s concerns, animal husbandry secretary Pradeep Kumar said, "We have drawn Bengal's attention to slack sanitisation operations and have told the government to immediately take remedial measures. The state has not carried out operations according to the action plan."
Dr Nabarro said control and containment operations in West Bengal are a perfect example of what can happen when the virus infects densely populated regions where people are dependent on their livestock for nourishment and earnings. "I sympathise with the state government.
Culling over four million birds is a massive operation. It’s very difficult to take poultry from poor people who depend on it to live. It’s then much harder to control the outbreak and stamp out the virus," he said.
Meanwhile, India on Wednesday asked director general of FAO, Dr Jacques Diouf, to pressurise Bangladesh into stepping up control and containment operations. In Tripura, which announced an outbreak on Monday, over 19,000 poultry have been culled in the past two days by 26 rapid response teams even as fresh bird deaths in Rajnagar and Bishalgarh were reported.
