New labs to fight bird flu in India
India will soon be building several new laboratories in a bid to combat delays in testing the bird flu virus and drive faster public health responses.
Avian influenza is currently sweeping through West Bengal, which is one of India’s most densely populated areas. However, this has proven too much for the country’s only laboratory specialising in testing bird flu.
Each week, the High Security Animal Disease Laboratory in the central city of Bhopal is receiving hundreds of dead bird samples to test for bird flu.
“It has been decided to build several new laboratories especially in view of the bird flu situation now,” said India’s animal husbandry commissioner Santanu Kumar Bandyopadhyay, adding that things are moving quickly.
According to officials, new laboratories and research facilities are imperative in view of the rapid spread of the avian flu in the eastern state.
To begin with, at least six laboratories are being built which will be of biosafety level-3 (BSL-3), or clinical and diagnostic facilities that work with potentially lethal agents.
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