Bird flu outbreak in Andhra Pradesh: Burden of bird blight

The Zilla Parishad School in Badampudi village, West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, usually filled with children’s laughter and lesson chants during the day, was eerily silent on February 13. The school courtyard, where students played and chased each other during recess, is littered with fallen leaves.

The school was declared a holiday that Thursday and the premises had been made a temporary isolation centre for the official teams assigned to cull the birds from the coops contaminated by bird flu, which are less than 1 km away.

The four members of a team of experts from the Sri Venkateswara Veterinary University (SVVU) of Tirupati adjust their Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits in a classroom.

The team inspected the bird flu-affected poultry farms at Badampudi in Eluru district, Velpur in West Godavari district, and Kanuru Agraharam in East Godavari district.

Eluru District Joint Director of Animal Husbandry, T. Govindaraju, says about 1,000 PPE kits and other safety gear were provided to the 20 teams conducting the culling operation even as he guides the visiting team of experts to a poultry farm in Badampudi.

Each team is comprised of 20 workers and is supervised by a veterinary assistant surgeon (VAS), he adds.

The experts’ team quietly enters the poultry farm, where the workers and Animal Husbandry officials have been working for the past two days.

Necessary evil

The team inspected the procedures followed and studied the reasons behind the outbreak of the virus even as the workers euthanised the birds one by one and placed them into bags. The bird carcasses were then carried away and disposed of in large pits dug nearby.

“We have Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). It is necessary to put down even the healthy birds in the coop to avoid spreading infection,” says Dr. Harsha of the Animal Husbandry Department.

‘Endless nightmare’

While this is happening, Satti Venkata Manikanta Reddy, the poultry farm owner, stands outside his farm, watching the culling of his birds helplessly without a head mask. As numbness spread over his body, he stood still, and sweat began to wash away the vermillion smeared on his forehead. Confessing that he forgot to wear the head mask because he was still in shock, he said, “It is as if I’m living in an endless nightmare.”

Manikanta Reddy, however, recounts the beginning of the nightmare: “On a January morning, I noticed that some of the chickens began to die after symptoms of lethargy, dull eyes and ruffled feathers.

“Initially, I did not find it unusual as it is normal for some birds to die in poultry farms. But I began to worry when the mortality increased by the day, and more than 100 to 200 birds died every day. There seemed to be no end to it,” he continued.

A few days later, Manikanta Reddy, who took a bank loan of ₹12 crore, informed the bank of the problem.

He also approached the Animal Husbandry officials, hoping for a quick fix. But when the veterinary doctor examined his poultry farm and sent samples to Bhopal for testing, he knew the problem was bigger than he imagined.

The vet tells Manikanta Reddy that his chickens are infected with bird flu and that the government has ordered them to be culled to prevent further spread.

“The words struck like a blow. I went weak in my knees and couldn’t breathe for a moment,” Manikanta Reddy recalls.

Alerted by the virus outbreak, the Animal Husbandry Department ordered the culling of nearly 2 lakh chickens in infected poultry farms in Eluru, NTR and East and West Godavari districts. Not less than 25,000 birds were culled in each coop, say officials

Meanwhile, the veterinarians who were trained to save the animals struggle to find words to explain their feelings as they wade into the heart of the bird flu outbreak in the State.

Donning protective gear and PPE kits, they monitor the culling of thousands of chickens and ensure that the SOP is followed.

“It is too dangerous even to let a single bird survive as the virus is highly potent,” says Dr. Sai Ramesh, Assistant Director of Animal Husbandry, Bhimadole, who looks weary after spending nearly two hours in a PPE suit as he monitored the culling at a farm.

“Even if we feel parched, we have to wait till the process is completed, discard the PPE suits safely, and sanitise ourselves properly to drink a gulp of water,” says Dr. Sai Ramesh.

“What’s more difficult is carrying the burden of grief of each culling. We wouldn’t let it break us, though. In the end, we are doing our duty and continue to do so, no matter the hurdles,” says Dr. Sai Ramesh.

As the sun set, casting a warm orange glow over the nearby fields, Dr. Sai Ramesh and his colleagues returned to the school-turned-isolation centre. Their journey, however, was far from over. The next day, they had to visit another poultry farm and repeat the same exercise.

Nonchalant villagers

At the next dawn, life in Badampudi continued uninterrupted even as birds were culled in one of its only three poultry farms. The village awoke to familiar sounds—the crowing of roosters, the rustling of leaves, the laughter of children running freely on the streets, and the bustling of people.

“Nobody knew that the birds were dying on the farm. Even now, when the news broke, nobody seems to be bothered,” says 46-year-old Y. Ramesh, a mechanic in the village, which is largely dependent on agriculture and horticulture.

According to Panchayat Secretary K.V. Giridhar Rao, the village has 29.98 hectares of agricultural land, of which 16.73 hectares are under oil palm cultivation and 6.93 hectares are under coconut cultivation. About 2.84 hectares are used for cocoa cultivation, he says.

“I stay in Gudem [Tadepalligudem], 7 km from here. None comes here as no train stops here. There is no word about the chickens,” says Badampudi railway station in-charge Chandra Sekhar Kumar, who hails from Patna.

“We have seen dreadful pandemics like the COVID-19. Why should we panic?” asks a septuagenarian villager, A. Nageswara Rao.

However, two persons reached the village and could not stay oblivious to the bird flu menace even if he wished to—53-year-old Tanukula Srinu and 40-year-old Kalamati Chinna Rao—the sweepers assigned the sanitation duty.

Exhausted and covered in a fine layer of white dust, they sprinkled white stone powder and bleaching powder on the streets to prevent the spread of the bird flu virus. Then, they took a break to sit down, holding their brooms.

They had no protective gear and continued their work with a thin cloth covering their noses and mouths.

Srinu is from Gollagudem, 12 km away from Badampudi. “My family was against my coming here on this duty,” he says with a smile. The father of two children asks: “What if I get infected or pass on the infection to my wife or two children?”

He also vehemently complained that some villagers threw dead chickens on the streets under the night cover, leaving him to clean up after them.

Chinna Rao, who hails from Chebrolu, about 10 km from Badampudi, adds that they take the risky job only to feed their families, and a little empathy from the villagers would not hurt anybody.

Industry setback

Meanwhile, elaborating on the prime causes of the flu outbreak, Animal Husbandry Director T. Damodar Naidu says, “Unclean poultry farms become breeding grounds for flies and their maggots, which attract pathogen-carrying migratory birds. These wild migratory birds are natural reservoirs for the low-pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) strains.”

He, however, debunks the rumours that bird flu affected humans in India.

Furthermore, Andhra Pradesh Poultry Federation vice-president T. Kutumba Rao says that false claims about bird flu cast a shadow on the food supply chain.

According to Rao, Andhra Pradesh poultry produce 4.5 crore to 5 crore eggs per day. Of this, 2.5 crore to 3 crore are consumed locally, and 50 lakh to 60 lakh are supplied to schools and Anganwadi centres. Sometimes, between 50 lakh and one crore eggs are imported from other States.

However, amid the bird flu panic prevailing among people, the demand for eggs and chicken has fallen drastically. On average, the price of a chicken has fallen to ₹75 from ₹150 per bird, and the average cost of an egg has come down to ₹4 from ₹5.

Conversely, in the U.S.A., where bird flu is reported, egg prices have increased because people fear that production will decline, Rao says.

Life goes on

At Badampudi, Manikanta Reddy tries to come to terms with his loss even as he tries to erase from his mind the picture of his birds getting culled all during the day.

“My father, Kolla Venkata Reddy, was the owner of a poultry farm at Attili, his native place, 26 km from here. At the age of 13, I entered the chicken coop holding my father’s hand and spent most of my life over the last 42 years with the chicken.”

“I had nurtured thousands of birds with care and dedication. Every morning, I would rise with the sun, and my heart would fill with joy at the sound of the chickens clucking, their wings fluttering as they greeted the new day. Everything is lost. What do I do now?” he wondered.

After gazing into the setting sun for a long while, he says, “Poultry was a source of pride for me. It still is and will always be.”