Centre To Set Up 4 New Labs For Bird Flu
Centre has decided to set up four new laboratories in the country to detect avian influenza virus, a top official in Union Animal Husbandry said on Friday. "Centre has appointed a United Nations agency for this purpose. The tender process for setting up the labs would be completed by February 2009 and work expected to commence by June 2009," joint secretary of Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Arvind Goshal said at an interactive session on Bird Flu here.
Such samples cannot be tested in ordinary labs. At present the country has only two laboratories, one at Bhopal and the other at Bangalore, to test bird flu samples. All the laboratories, including one in Namakkal in Tamil Nadu, were likely to become operational by the middle of 2010, Goshal said. This year saw outbreak of bird flu in 15 districts of West Bengal and two districts in Assam and Tripura in June. The disease re-occurred again in West Bengal and Assam in November-December.
