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Seven people test negative for bird flu in India
22 Feburary 2006
At least seven people quarantined in India with suspected
bird flu have tested negative for the deadly H5N1 strain, officials said
on Wednesday.
Health workers have killed tens of thousands of birds in Navapur, a remote
town in the western state of Maharashtra where an outbreak among chickens
was confirmed on Saturday. A total of 12 people were quarantined in Navapur
either because they suffered flu-like symptoms or as a precaution and
Vijay Satbir Singh, Maharashtra's top health official, told Reuters in
Mumbai he was concerned over possible human cases.
In all 95 people were tested but 90 proved negative for the H5N1 strain,
said India's federal health secretary P.K. Hota. The other five samples,
which were from the 12 people who had been quarantined, were being tested
further.
"Five samples are being subjected for further tests. Right now, we have
no single (confirmed) human case of avian influenza," Hota told Reuters
in New Delhi.
"Even those five cases, if they are established as having H5N1, are unlikely
to be full blown cases," he said. Alarm is growing at the emergence of
the H5N1 virus in India, where hundreds of millions of people live in
rural areas side-by-side with livestock and domestic fowl.
Health officials fear that in a nation of more than 1 billion people,
many of whom have little or no access to health services, avian influenza
could rapidly spread.
Source: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/DEL14485.htm
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