Union government has sanctioned setting up of four new labs in the country to handle avian flu diagnostic outbreaks at an initial investment of Rs four crore each. These labs are coming up before November this year at the existing Regional Referral Laboratories in four regions. In north it will be set up at Jalandhar in Punjab in south it will be at Bangalore in Karnataka, in west it will be at Pune in Maharashtra and the fourth at Kolkotta in West Bengal.

The Bangalore facility will be set up at the Institute of Animal Health and Veterinary Biologicals, Hebbal part of the Karnataka University of Animal and Fishery Sciences, Bidar.

The efforts have the Centre come in as part of its preparatory efforts to face avian influenza occurrence efficiently, stated Dr C Renukaprasad, director, Institute of Animal Health and Veterinary Biologicals.

The main aim of the Centre is reduce the pressure on the high security animal disease laboratory in Bhopal. The four new labs will help increase the detection of avian influenza in a speedy manner. However, the new facilities will be a grade lower to the one in Bhopal. The Bhopal lab has a bio-security level of IV while the new ones will be of level III, stated Dr Renukaprasad.

The new labs will detect the disease while the one in Bhopal will confirm the results. Each of these labs will have an estimated strength of 15 personnel as par top the 11th Plan announcement. To begin with the RRL will utilize their existing personnel.

Post Navapur, Maharashtra incident in February last year where 30,000 chickens succumbed at a major poultry farm, the government of India went on for a massive awareness drive which was supported with a comprehensive training for veterinary doctors to help handle the crisis during an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus. The fear was that the virus is known to mutate and be easily passed over humans during their association with birds at farms. In 2006, from February to April there were quite a few outbreaks reported in two districts of Navapur and Jalgaon in Maharashtra and adjoining areas in Gujarat. More than one million birds and over 1.5 million eggs were destroyed in a 10 km radius of the infected farms. In August 2006, India was declared free of bird flu.

The third attack in India was early this month at Manipur and the Government made efforts to contain the outbreak after slaughtering the birds.

The containment measures include destroying poultry and feed in an area spanning three kilometers of the infected farm. There is also stringent surveillance of sudden death of poultry and symptoms of fever in humans in a 10 km-radius.

Since the maiden outbreak of the H5N1 strain in 1997 at Hong Kong, the disease has been reported in 70 countries significant being China, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan killing around 200 people out of 319 cases. It also led to scores of chickens and ducks being slaughtered in dozens.

The Regional Referral Lab in Bangalore has been engaged in the research and diagnostics for various animal diseases including poultry, sheep, dogs and monkeys to name a few.