Sealing Eastern India
Recombinomics Commentary 18:59
February 3, 2008
Orders were issued on Saturday that apart from Bengal, its neighbouring states — Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Bihar — will also be banned from supplying poultry. “It’s more of a preparatory step to stop the virus from entering our region.
The above comments describe plans by the central government of India to seal off large portions of eastern India from the rest of the country (see satellite map here and here). Earlier, West Bengal was sealed, but the above plan greatly expands the sealed regions.
The choice of districts is curious, since Chattisgarh does not share a border with West Bengal. Currently, there is a “precautionary” culling plan to cull poultry near the West Bengal borders. The precautionary culling is just an extension of the culling within West Bengal, since H5N1 has been confirmed near the borders of Bihar, Jharkhand, and Orissa. Moreover, excessive poultry deaths have been reported for the adjacent states, which have no confirmed H5N1.
However, the absence of confirmed H5N1 is largely due to a lag in the release of test results. Samples from eastern Jharkhand were sent on January 15 for testing, but results have not been made public.
Therefore, the proposed sealing of Chattisgarh, may reflect unreported H5N1 positives in Jharkhand, since Jharkjhand does share a border with Chattisgarh.
The above plan however, is not likely to stop the H5N1 spread, which is facilitated by wild birds. Several regions in northern India have reported excessive poultry deaths, and like the samples described above, results have not been released.
These unreported regions are well to the west of the districts described above, and southern Pakistan already has confirmed H5N1 in the Karachi area.
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