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| Bird flu outbreak in Indian state | Bird flu outbreak in Indian state |
| (40 minutes later) | |
| Health officials in India have confirmed an outbreak of bird flu in the eastern state of West Bengal. | Health officials in India have confirmed an outbreak of bird flu in the eastern state of West Bengal. |
| Nearly 10,000 chickens have been found dead in the area in the past week and a mass cull of poultry is under way. | Nearly 10,000 chickens have been found dead in the area in the past week and a mass cull of poultry is under way. |
| Tests show the birds are carrying the deadly H5N1 virus which can cause avian influenza in humans, officials say. | Tests show the birds are carrying the deadly H5N1 virus which can cause avian influenza in humans, officials say. |
| India's huge poultry industry is worth billions of dollars. Several outbreaks of bird flu in India in recent years have all been brought under control. | |
| Fears for humans | |
| Tests carried out at a federal laboratory on samples of dead birds from two districts of West Bengal confirmed that they were carrying the deadly H5N1 virus, officials said. | |
| "We can now say there's an outbreak of bird flu in certain parts of West Bengal - in the districts of Birbhum and South Dinajpur to be specific," India's federal health secretary Naresh Dayal said. | |
| Out of ignorance, we had a lot of chicken curry but now we are scared Sheikh Qasim, W Bengal poultry farmer | |
| "This has to be combated on a war footing." | |
| Health officials have already descended on the affected area and have begun culling thousands of chickens in the districts bordering Bangladesh. | |
| The state government has banned the import of poultry from Bangladesh which reported bird flu outbreaks last year. | |
| Officials say they are particularly concerned after reports that villagers in West Bengal had been cooking the dead birds and eating them. | |
| They say they will begin monitoring people for flu-like symptoms now that the virus has been confirmed. | |
| Large quantities of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu have also been despatched to the area. | |
| "Because a lot of villagers cooked the dead birds in the last week, we are apprehensive," Birbhum district's chief medical officer, Sunil Kumar Bhowmick, said. | |
| "It did not appear to us that this could be bird flu," Sheikh Qasim, a small poultry farmer in the Margram area of Birbhum district, told the BBC. | |
| "Out of ignorance, we had a lot of chicken curry but now we are scared to the bone." | |
| India faced a major outbreak of bird flu in the north-eastern state of Manipur last year. Previous outbreaks were in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. |