Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) volunteers and staff in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal are working around the clock to distribute information about the potentially deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza, as authorities continue efforts to cull 2.8 million birds.
Since first reported at the beginning of January, the disease has spread to 13 of West Bengal’s 19 districts, and has also followed trading routes into the northern state of Uttar Pradesh where thousands of birds supplied from West Bengal have been culled. The Uttar Pradesh government has banned the supply of chicken, eggs and all poultry products from West Bengal.
The impact of the current outbreak on the country’s poultry industry is expected to be serious. This outbreak needs to be contained quickly as many smaller Indian hatcheries - part of the industry valued at around $11 billion – are at risk of going out of business.
The West Bengal state branch of the IRCS has distributed avian influenza information brochures (which were produced at the IRCS National Headquarters in 11 languages) written in the local Bengali language to all affected districts.
“These brochures contain practical information on dealing with the crisis in a pictorial easy-to-read format,” explained Mr. Binoy Prasad Roy, Honorary Secretary, IRCS West Bengal State.
Trained disaster management volunteers have also started an awareness campaign. In coordination with local governments, they are visiting communities and explaining to the unwilling and at times angry villagers about the pandemic and urging them to hand over poultry to the culling teams.
In the West Bengal district of Murshidabad, teams of IRCS volunteers are working around the clock to raise community awareness about the disease and to convince villagers to part with their chickens. However, beyond this, the volunteers are also training community members to be able to distribute information themselves. Using this grassroots method, about 15,000 villagers in 110 villages have been reached by the awareness campaign.
This is not the first time that the IRCS has had to respond to an outbreak of avian influenza. In 2006, volunteers and staffed distributed more than half a million information brochures in response to an outbreak of the disease in a few districts of Maharashtra.
“In the wake of the most recent outbreak of avian influenza outbreak in West Bengal, we are closely monitoring the situation in and is in constant touch with the state branch,” said Mr. Salam Vishwaas, Secretary, IRCS Murshidabad District branch.
Despite fears that avian influenza could get out of control in West Bengal, no cases of human infection have been reported so far. “The work of the IRCS volunteers at the community level is essential in limiting the expansion of infection in birds and its spread to humans,” said Pierre Duplessis, the International Federation’s special envoy for avian and human influenza. “Their commitment is inspiring.”
States of Jharkhand, Bihar and Assam that share a common border with West Bengal have been instructed to ban and prevent any entry of poultry or poultry related products from West Bengal into these states. Other states have also been put on alert. To prevent spread of the outbreak into the neighboring states, it has been decided to create a five kilometre wide poultry free ring along the border of West Bengal in the states of Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa.
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A villager brings bird stock to health workers for culling at Bamdevpur village, about 250 km north of the eastern Indian city. Veterinary workers began killing thousands of chickens as fears mounted that bird flu could have spread to a third district in West Bengal. Officials said it could take up to a week to cull about 400,000 chickens in two districts of the state where the latest outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza has been detected. (REUTERS/Parth Sanyal/courtesy www.alertnet.org).
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