Failing the flu test

Has the deadly bird flu virus, H5N1, really made inroads into the poultry farms of India? This is the question that surfaces through the confusing reports from events over the weekend in Navapur in Maharashtra.

Has the deadly bird flu virus, H5N1, really made inroads into the poultry farms of India? This is the question that surfaces through the confusing reports from events over the weekend in Navapur in Maharashtra. On one hand, statements of state health authorities leave no room for doubt that this is indeed it. They quote the report of the central government lab in Bhopal that conducted tests on the dead chickens confirming the presence of the virus. If the bird flu reports are indeed true, India joins a number of countries like Australia, Greece, Italy, China, and Hong Kong, along with Africa and parts of West Asia, where the virus has made its baleful presence felt. On the other hand, the poultry industry insists that this is a false alarm set off by health officials and hyped by the ever trigger-happy media. They cite reports of other labs and senior veterinary officials to argue that this is not the dreaded flu, but another, less deadly, disease.

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The truth will hopefully be known in the next few days when the results of further tests conducted in labs outside the country come in. But why, given our biotech prowess, do we need confirmation from abroad in the first place? Obviously, Indian labs lack credibility. In fact, we are yet to find out the nature of the virus that raised a plague scare in Surat in 1994. Given the inordinate time being taken, there is needless panic, causing great harm to the industry. It is true that the lethal H5N1 germ could mutate and spread from person to person in a pandemic of appalling proportions. But culling is just a first line of defence and futile in the absence of a sensitive surveillance system that could detect emerging strains of the pandemic virus.