“We have so far culled over one lakh, "100,000" chicks in different villages in Kamrup, Nalbari and Barpeta districts, while authorities in different districts have banned entry of poultry from other districts in order to prevent further spread of the disease,” Aswini Kataky, Director of Veterinary and Animal Husbandry said here on Sunday.
It was on November 27 that the authorities first detected the dreaded disease in Rajabazar village under Hajo revenue circle in Kamrup (Rural) district and atleast 25,000 birds were culled in a 3-km radius of Rajabazar. Four days later bird flu was detected and confirmed at Patgaon village under Rani block as well as in Sarpara village under Rampur block, both in Kamrup district. Bird flu was subsequently reported and confirmed in Gobardhana block in Barpeta district and in Paschim Nalbari block in the last three days. Rapid reaction teams have already culled about 50,000 birds in these two blocks in the last two days, Kataky said.
The Assam Government has sounded a general alert against the spread of bird flu apart from the ban on inter-district transportation of poultry. “There have been some reports of people trying to shift the birds from infected areas to other places with the intention of disposing them off in the markets instead of taking the government compensation,” Kataky said.
Meanwhile, authorities in the three Barak Valley districts of southern Assam have banned the entry of poultry from neighbouring Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram in view of the bird flu reported from different parts of the state. A sizeable number of poultry is regularly smuggled into the Barak Valley from Bangladesh and it was from such smuggled poultry that Tripura had suffered a massive outbreak of bird flu last year.
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