By Kamil Zaheer NEW DELHI, July 30 (Reuters) - India has stepped up vigil on the Myanmar border after receiving "credible" reports of an outbreak of bird flu in its neighbour, which has witnessed several outbreaks this year. The OIE, the global organisation for animal health, reported an outbreak among chickens in Mon state in southern Myanmar on July 24. Upma Chawdhry, joint secretary in India's Animal Husbandry Department, told Reuters that authorities in the remote state of Mizoram had been told to ensure no poultry was smuggled in from Myanmar. "Vigil has been hugely stepped up on the Mizoram border," she said. Mizoram has a porous 400-km (250-mile) frontier with Myanmar, seen by some international experts as a potential black hole in the fight against bird flu. Local officials in Mizoram said veterinarians were monitoring poultry health in the state more closely and rapid response teams were on stand-by to respond to any report of bird flu. India, which shares a 1,600-km (1,000-mile) border with Myanmar, is fighting an outbreak of the H5N1 strain in chickens in Manipur state, which lies north of Mizoram and also borders Myanmar. Authorities said they had culled around 140,000 chickens in and around a small poultry farm near Imphal, Manipur's capital, since announcing the outbreak of the H5N1 virus last week. But there were no reports of any suspected human infections, after 21 people on the poultry farm tested negative for bird flu. Medical workers in Manipur have checked more than 45,000 households in the region to monitor people's health, said Vineet Chawdhry, a top official of India's health ministry. The H5N1 strain remains largely a bird virus but experts fear it might mutate into a form that easily passes between people, sparking an influenza pandemic in which millions could die. At least 192 people have died of bird flu out of 319 people infected since 2003 globally, the World Health Organisation says. India, which has close to 500 million chickens, also shares a 4,000-km border (2,500-mile) with Bangladesh, which has also battled several flare-ups of the H5N1 strain in fowl. "It is a challenging situation managing such large borders," said Upma Chawdhry. New Delhi reported two major outbreaks in chickens last year, before declaring the country bird flu free in August. (Additional reporting by Biswajyoti Das in Guwahati)
