Nepal-locals complain of symptoms similar to that of #bird flu.

Govt response: Cursory probe, lax quarantine
KATHMANDU, DEC 01 -
A day after officials confirmed bird flu in Bhaktapur and quar antined the area, many locals in and around Madhyapur Thimi Municipality on Wednesday complained of symptoms similar to that of bird flu.
Sita Rai, a resident near the site of the outbreak, said she has sore throat, fever, cough and muscle ache.
However, two health officials at the site, who stayed for less than 20 minutes in the area, said she is fine and that there is nothing to worry about.
The officials, however, did not give much chance to Rai to explain her symptoms, this reporter witnessed. They checked her blood pressure and gave her a medicine for headache.
Government officials have claimed that humans have not been infected with the H5N1 virus. Janak Kumari Tamang also said she is having breathing problems since the past few days.
Director of the National Public Health Laboratory Dr Geeta Shakya said a careful surveillance is needed when it comes to human beings as the bird flu mortality rate among them is very high.
“The veterinary confirmed that the virus is the H5N1 strain,” Shakya said.
Despite claims from officials of the Rapid Response Team (RRT), deployed in the outbreak area on Tuesday that they have instructed the locals on how to adopt precautionary measures, the residents there vented their ire, saying that the government officials did not spare time to explain the action they took on Tuesday.
“The officials, with all the safety gear and masks, just came in and started slaughtering fowls,” one Deepak Ghising said.
“We were not told about precautionary measures we should take.”
Over 300 chickens and ducks were slaughtered on the banks of the Manohara river on Tuesday following the outbreak at a small-scale poultry farm.
However, claims that all fowls at the outbreak site were slaughtered were not substantiated. There were still many ducks in the pond, abutting around 42 shanties.
Dr Ram Parichan Shah of the Bhaktapur veterinary office, who visited the site on Wednesday, said the ducks belong to other nearby areas and are probably not infected.
However, local residents said that the pond is the only place where ducks from the entire area come to swim.

Near the site of the outbreak, there were other concerns too.
The area has big pig farms. “We have 42 houses and each house has over 20 pigs,” Chandra Bahadur Tamang, a local, said.
The 2009 flu outbreak (H1N1, also known as swine flu) was caused by the triple reassortment of the bird, swine and human flu viruses, further aggravated by the Eurasian pig flu virus, according to the World Health Organization.
“The 2009 flu has become a seasonal flu and we need not worry about it right now,” said Dr Narayan Prasad Ghimire, the coordinator of the experts’ team and a senior veterinary doctor. “Given the situation at the (outbreak) site we cannot rule out a pandemic in Nepal.”
But Ghimire also sought to allay fears and said that nothing further has been confirmed so far. “We are keeping the pigs under continuous surveillance, while tests have not confirmed anything yet. Until and unless we confirm the facts, people need not panic.”
http://www.ekantipur.com/2011/12/01/top-story/govt-response-cursory-probe-lax-quarantine/344732/