The masked official in white protective gear and bright blue gloves grabbed a squawking hen by its legs, held it upside down and twisted its neck in one swift motion. The bird expelled a mass of possibly contaminated faeces that sprayed the man’s mask and faces of unprotected village boys crowding around.

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The writhing body was then dropped into a jute sack full of fowls with broken necks, crying out their death throes. The people carrying their fowl for culling were not given preventative Tamiflu tablets or masks. The area wasn’t sanitized with bleach after the team left with sacks of dead birds.

The crude culling in Dakhalbati village in Birbhum district’s Rampurhat I block indicates West Bengal’s lack of preparation in dealing with the crisis.

Within a fortnight of the confirmation of the avian influenza outbreak on January 15, the virus had spread through 14 of the state’s 19 districts. An estimated 132,625 chickens were killed, mostly backyard poultry. Despite the state government’s claim that the situation was “under control” and more than three million chicks had been culled by February 3, the flu continued to spread.

Not that there hadn’t been adequate warning. In July 2007, the Union Ministry of Agriculture’s department animal husbandry, dairying and fisheries (dahd) had called a meeting in Kolkata where animal husbandry authorities from all eastern and north-eastern states were present. They were warned of the risks from the bird flu outbreaks in neighbouring Bangladesh, where backyard poultry had been badly hit.

Virologists had also warned that the floodplains of West Bengal were especially vulnerable to avian influenza. The large number of waterbodies and high humidity conditions are ideal for the infection to spread, they said. High density of poultry and human population upped the risk factor one notch. Birbhum district, for example, had over 3.2 million poultry and a human population density of 658 per sq km. Maharashtra’s Nandurbar district, where the virus first cropped up in February 2006, had 3.1 million poultry and a human population density of 260 per sq km.

West Bengal authorities took a month to confirm bird flu after people had alerted them in mid-December

Senior state animal husbandry officials confirm they had been on alert. “Poultry samples were sent for tests whenever bird deaths were reported in the past 10 months and over 3,500 samples had tested negative for bird flu until mid-January,” says D N Banerjee, assistant director, department of animal resources development (ard). But these claims fly in the face of the state machinery’s failure to act on early indications of the outbreak back in mid-December.

Tamiflu pills: not reaching all targets

Delayed action
Residents of Birbhum’s Margram village, where the virus was first detected, say they reported chicken deaths to the block development officer and block livestock development officer as early as December 15. No action was taken. Again, on December 28, one Murshida Bibi of Margram’s Mahipara hamlet had informed local officials that over 20 of her chicken had died suddenly. This time, the officials reported the matter to the Birbhum district magistrate. But it would be another fortnight before officials would come to Murshida Bibi’s house to collect poultry samples to send to the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory in Bhopal.

District officials did not impose the interim steps recommended by dahd after the samples were sent for testing: there was no restriction on movement of poultry outside the affected area. Residents say poultry traders took advantage of this and quickly shipped chicken out, helping the virus spread.

Culling operations started on January 16. Another week passed before the state acknowledged the seriousness of the crisis and sent senior officials to monitor containment operations. By then the virus had affected at least nine districts.