Culling to be over tomorrow; health check-up continues

Jalgaon, Apr 14 (UNI) With two government holidays this week on Tuesday and today slowing the pace of work, the task of culling 3.10 lakh birds in 354 villages of Jalgaon district in northern Maharashtra will now be completed only tomorrow.

But district Collector Vijay Singhal this evening said health check-up of the entire 2.50 lakh people in 47 villages located in three Km radius of the flu-hit 14 villages has been completed and no case of human influenza has been reported so far. He said medical examination of about five lakh people in the remaining 307 villages located in 3 to 10 Km range is in progress, he added.

Mr Singhal said a compensation of Rs 36.24 lakh has been paid to those whose poultry livestock had to be culled to contain the spread of H5N1 virus which has afflicted the poultry livestock three times in three weeks in the district.

The animal husbandary department had slaughtered 95,000 birds in 174 villages after the first outbreak on March 14, another 2.40 lakh chickens were killed in 288 villages following the second outbreak on March 28, while about 2.65 lakh of the estimated 3.10 lakh birds had been slaughtered till last evening in the aftermath of the third outbreak on April 6.

The country's first outbreak of the avian flu had also occured in northern Maharashtra at Nayapur on February 18 and authorities had killed more than three lakh birds and destroyed over 12 lakh eggs.

UNI XR-SA ARB BST1946