In India, Tripura Government has sounded an alert against bird flu in the wake of reports of the disease in neighbouring Bangladesh.
The family welfare preventive medicine and animal resource development (ARD) departments have jointly taken all possible steps to tackle avian flu, ARD director Narayan Chandra Das said.
The Health and family welfare ministry has asked the state to take precautionary measures as cases of avian flu were reported from across the border, he said.
A total of 266 trained ARD assistants have been asked to be vigilant in border areas as Tripura imports a huge quantity of chicks and eggs from Bangladesh, officials said.
Since 2004, some 270 humans have been infected with bird flu in 10 countries, with about 167 fatalities, mostly in Asia, according to the World Health Organization. With the flu spreading around the world, the virus has turned up in birds in Asia, Europe and Africa. So far, bird flu has mostly been passed from birds either to other birds or, in isolated cases, to humans.