Bird flu scare: Thane civic body in Maharashtra sets up control room

Thane, Jan 11: In the wake of bird flu cases at Parbhani in Maharashtra and some other states, the Thane Municipal Corporation has set up a control room for monitoring the situation and appealed to citizens to promptly report any case of bird deaths in the city.

Samples of dead crows from Mumbai, Thane, Dapoli, Parbhani and Beed districts have already been sent to Bhopal- based ICAR-National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases (ICAR-NIHSAD). Bird flu cases have so far been confirmed at Prabhani in Maharashtra, Kerala, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.

An official release from the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) on Monday said a control room, under the supervision of the civic body's veterinary department chief, has been set up to keep an eye on the situation. It will work to pro-actively remove fear from the minds of citizens and give them appropriate information from time-to-time, the release said.

Mayor Naresh Mhaske and the TMC Commissioner Dr Vipin Sharma appealed to citizens to promptly report to the control room if they come across any cases of bird deaths in the city limits.

Bird flu has been confirmed as the cause of death of around 900 hens in the last few days at a poultry farm in Parbhani, a senior official said on Monday.

The Parbhani district administration has now decided to cull nearly 8,000 birds in Murumba village where these hens died, Collector Deepak Muglikar said.