Bird Flu Cases Confirmed in India, France
India and France both confirmed their first outbreak of H5N1 bird flu among fowl Saturday, and an Indian official said authorities planned to cull half a million birds to check the spread of the virus.
Tens of thousands of chickens have died of bird flu in recent weeks in western India, and people suffering flu-like symptoms were to be tested for the virus, officials said.
Saturday’s announcement came as other nations fought to contain outbreaks of the virus. Bird flu has killed at least 91 people, most of them in Asia, since 2003, according to World Health Organization figures.
The latest death was reported Saturday by Indonesia.
In western India, officials planned to immediately begin slaughtering about 500,000 birds in a 1.5-mile radius around the poultry farms in the town of Navapur, where the confirmed cases were detected, said Anees Ahmed, minister for animal husbandry in Maharashtra state.
France confirmed its first case of the H5N1 strain in a wild duck found dead in a bird reserve about 20 miles northeast of Lyon, France’s third-largest city, the Agriculture Ministry said. All fowl there have been ordered vaccinated or moved indoors.
Madeleine Monnet, 60, of Joyeux, where the diseased bird was discovered, said, “Here everybody has a little bit of fowl.”
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