India clamps down on bird flu-hit town

INDIA: Indian authorities restricted traffic in a bird flu-hit western town on Thursday as the country waited anxiously for laboratory results on whether the outbreak had infected humans, officials said.

Seven of 12 people quarantined with suspected bird flu had tested negative, but more tests were being conducted to ensure the rest were also free from the deadly H5N1 virus.

In all, 95 people had so far been tested, but 90 proved negative for the H5N1 strain.

The remaining five are quarantined in a state-run hospital in Navapur, a remote town in Maharashtra state which reported India's first brush with avian influenza in poultry last week.

"We should know by today the status of the five people," Maharashtra's top health official, Vijay Satbir Singh, told Reuters.

While movement of poultry around Navapur has already been banned, authorities said they have now placed restrictions on trains and road traffic passing through the town."We want to minimise contact between the local people and outsiders.

We are telling road travellers to use masks and get on with their journeys without stopping," Maharashtra's health director, T.P. Doke, told Reuters from Navapur.

"Trains are not stopping here and trucks are being parked at a site four-km away from town. It's a kind of sealing." In Navapur and surrounding areas, civic and health workers went around on motor-rickshaws making announcements about bird flu to locals, most of whom were ignorant of the disease.

Workers also moved door-to-door collecting backyard poultry and destroying them after compensating owners.

Mumbai, Thursday, Reuters