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What is Bird Flu?
Its a Influenza A virus which spreads in humans as well as in birds. Its also known as avian flu. Its a type of epidemic in birds. The name of the virus is H5N1.Once affected all the birds in that area must be killed to protect it from spreading in the neighbouring areas.
More about this here.
A list of FAQ is here
Global context:
This virus is started spreading from Asia. Most affected countries are from Asia. But it had significantly spreaded in other continents also. The world is quite concerned about this virus.
Chickens and its meat and its processing, is a whole industry worldwide. And this industry has been always affected badly wherever this avian flu has been detected. Prices of chicken meat have fallen drastically as sales have plummeted. Thus a lot of people always get financially affected because of this disease.
Here is a list of countries that have been affected:
– Austria
– Azerbaijan
– Bulgaria
– Cambodia
– China (human cases confirmed)
– Croatia
– Cyprus
– Egypt
– France
– Germany
– Greece
– Hungary
– India
– Indonesia (human cases confirmed)
– Iran
– Iraq (human cases confirmed)
– Italy
– Japan
– Kazakhstan
– Kuwait
– Laos
– Malaysia (human cases confirmed)
– Mongolia
– Niger
– Nigeria
– Romania
– Russia
– Slovakia
– Slovenia
– South Korea
– Sweden
– Thailand (human cases confirmed)
– Turkey (human cases confirmed)
– Ukraine
– Vietnam (human cases confirmed)
India:
In India, the virus had been detected before also. Last year around this time in the state of Maharastra (where Inida`s financial capital Mumbai is located), this virus had been detected. Many chickens were killed around that time.
The latest development:
This time the virus had affected an eastern state of West Bengal in India. The state shares an international border with neighbouring country Bangladesh.
The virus had spreaded quitely but massively in the state. And now most of the state is nearly affected with this deadly virus. It is expected that Kolkata will soon get affected too.
As always, state official was late in reacting to the reports of chicken and other birds dieing in the state. And now about 14 lakh(1.4 million) chickens have to be killed. The no. will go up as and when more places are hit.
This business of keeping chickens and selling eggs is mostly done by the family members of very poor farmers, who strive to meet the ends in running his family. Though there are self-help groups present in the villages, but most are non-functional now as the whole district has been hit and none can do any business in this field.
But, the state government is not at all worried! Its taking its own time to kill those affected birds, thus letting it spread to more areas. They are not at all concerned about those poor farmers who have been asked to not to sell chickens. In most of the cases the chickens have been killed or taken away.
Now they cant find any means to survive. They have been going from pillar-to-post for help or compensation. But those people in corridors of power are unmoved. They cant even be seen in those affected areas, leave alone the compensation!
The more they delay in finishing the ongoing work to kill those birds, the worse the situation will be. But who cares, those ministers and MLAs and MPs are only saying that `progress is being made` or `work is being done to protect the virus from spreading`.
Those farmers will always be a sufferer…..
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