Home

  • Home
    • » e-Newsletters

India slaughters chickens to contain bird flu

Infection Control Monitor, February 24, 2006

In western India, health officials and farm workers in protective clothing began the culling of hundreds of thousands of chickens in an effort to prevent the spread of the H5N1 strain, the Associated Press reports.

Indian officials reported the death of a 27-year-old poultry farm owner who had flu-like symptoms, though tests had yet to determine what killed him.

"At this juncture we can only suspect that the cause of his death could be bird flu," an official in the Surat district of Gujarat state, Vatsala Vasudev, told the Press Trust of India news agency.

The teams are expected to slaughter about 500,000 birds within a 1.5-mile radius, said Anees Ahmed, the Maharashtra state minister for animal husbandry.

Most Popular