- (Reuters) -- Health officials in India were monitoring
4 children suffering from fever on Wed [1 Aug 2007] after they had contact
with dead or sick poultry in Manipur state, where authorities are fighting
a bird flu outbreak in fowl.
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- The children have been [confined] to their homes and
are being visited twice daily by medical professionals, said Vineet Chawdhry,
joint secretary in the Ministry of Health. "We are being extra careful,"
Chawdhry said, adding that throat swabs and blood samples taken from the
children had been sent to a federal laboratory, where tests for the H5N1
strain of bird flu will be carried out. The children live within a 5-km
(3-mile) radius of a small poultry farm where more than 130 chickens died
last month [Jul 2007] from the H5N1 virus.
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- Health officials have checked more than 235 000 people
around the affected farm since the weekend [28-29 Jul 2007] for flu symptoms,
while veterinary workers have culled a similar number of birds in the remote
northeastern state.
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- India had two major flare-ups of bird flu in its western
region last year [2006]. Manipur is located in the far north-east of India
adjacent to Myanmar [formerly Burma], which has battled several outbreaks
of bird flu in chickens this year [2007], including one reported last week.
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- Globally, at least 192 people have died due to bird flu
out of 319 cases since 2003, the World Health Organisation says. The H5N1
strain remains mainly a bird virus but experts fear it may mutate into
a form that passes easily between humans, triggering an influenza epidemic
in which millions could die.
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- Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD
- Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics
- Univ of West Indies
-
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at:
- http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
- Also my new website:
- http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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