Humans not infected with bird flu, 28 lakh people under surveillan

New Delhi, Feb 4 (UNI) The Centre is monitoring the bird flu situation in West Bengal where no suspected human case of avian influenza has been detected till now even as 27.69 lakh people have been put under surveillance following oubreak of the infection.

As many as 1,787 persons with fever and Upper Respiratory tract Infection have been detected of which six had exposure to sick/infected birds in the 0 to 3 km radius from the place where infection has broken out while in the 3-10 Kms area a total of 1511 persons have been detected with fever and URI of which six had exposure history. These cases have been followed up.

Meanwhile, health of 12.47 lakh people in 0-3 Km area and 15.22 lakhs in 3-10 Km area have been put under surveillance.

Central Rapid Response Teams have been deployed to all the districts. Trained teams from Gujarat and Goa have also been deployed to the affected areas. The team from Maharashtra has been assigned the task of reviewing the preparedness in the unaffected districts of Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling and North Dinajpur.

The manpower under Pulse-Polio programme supported by WHO has been requested to conduct surveillance for reporting influenza like illness in the districts adjoining affected areas of West Bengal. This includes the bordering districts of Assam, Jharkhand, Bihar, Tripura and Orissa.

To deal with the manpower requirement to tackle the infection, a two day training programme was held at NICD for physicians of Central Government Hospitals on clinical management of human cases of Avian influenza.

To prevent spread of the outbreak into the neighbouring states, it has been decided to create a poultry free ring of 5 km width along the border of West Bengal in Assam, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa.

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