Tuesday, February 21 2006 11:40 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Navapur: Inadequate infrastructure and refusal by contract workers to work in stink yesterday (Feb 2o,2006) slowed the pace of culling of chickens in this bird flu hit area of Maharashtra even as health officials carried out door-to-door check looking for people with symptoms of the disease.

Over 60,000 chickens were slaughtered in Surat, Uchchaal and other areas of Gujarat which are near Navapur taluka of Maharashtra's Nandurbar district while various states, including Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir and West Bengal, banned inflow of poultry and poultry products.

As the bird flu scare spread across the country, government today banned retail sale of Tamiflu, most potent drug against the disease, saying the step was necessary in view of general tendency to use the drug as precaution even when it is unnecessary.

About 70 chickens died at a hatchery in Hoogly district of West Bengal but authorities ruled out oubtreak of avian flu.

A day after Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said nine lakh chickens would be culled, the exercise failed to gather pace due to inadequate number of machines and manpower to dig pits for burying birds with suspected bird flu, Minister for Animal Husbandry Anees Ahmed said.

He, however, said steps were being taken to speed up the process.

In a reassuring sign, there were no fresh human cases of suspected avian flu in Navapur and the condition of two persons a woman and her son who were admitted to hospital here with symptoms of the disease was stated to be stable.