Bird flu or avian influenza is threatening Bihar's poultry industry and an SOS has been sent to the central government on tackling the deadly H5N1 virus as the state lacks the resources to do so, a Bihar minister said.

The SOS was sent after the Bhopal-based High Security Animal Disease Laboratory (HSADL) attributed the deaths of a number of crows across the state to the H5N1 virus, Animal Husbandry Minister Giriraj Singh said.

New Delhi: Ali Husain Ansari, a weaver of embroidered Mughal textiles and owner of Abdul Ghani Silk in Varanasi town of northern India, says he has not benefited from the government’s financial package for weavers announced in December 2011.

“All the money sanctioned by the government has gone to cooperative societies. The poor weaver still makes less than Rs.200 ($4) a day and does not have enough assets for loan guarantee,” Ali told IANS at an event here.

The Patna High Court has asked the state government to submit a detailed report on measures taken to treat and control encephalitis cases, especially in Magadh region. The government has to file its reply within two weeks.

Since August, of the 386 children admitted at ANMMCH, 83 died — the last death reported on November 14. The hospital still has 27 admissions, with no fresh cases reported since last week.
Fifty deaths because of suspected encephalitis took place at two Muzaffarpur hospitals in the last three months.

Bihar is in the grip of yet another lethal outbreak of viral encephalitis, which has claimed the lives of 82 children in the Magadh division so far. The latest death was reported on Sunday.

The division's only government hospital, the Anugrah Narayan Magadh Medical College Hospital, has been swamped with 383 cases of encephalitis, with an average of six cases pouring in each day.

Japanese encephalitis (JE) has claimed the lives of eight more children in the last five days in Bihar's Gaya district, taking the death toll in the epidemic to 62, a health official said Thursday.

The two children died in the last 24 hours and six in the last five days at Anugrah Narayan Medical College and Hospital (ANMCH), about 100 km from here, hospital superintendent Sitaram Prasad said.

Gaya: At least 59 people have so far died of encephalitis in Gaya, according to Anugrah Narain Magadh Medical College and Hospital (ANMMCH). The figure does not include villagers who died either during faith healing or fell victim to quacks.

This year’s death toll has already crossed the 2008 figure, when 43 people died of the disease. “Encephalitis seems to have taken an epidemic form. It has exposed all claims of health delivery system,” says activist Shree Bhagwan Bhaskar.

Bihar is in the grip of yet another seasonal outbreak of encephalitis that has claimed the lives of at least 16 children in the Magadh division in less than three weeks.

As on Sunday, the government-run Magadh Medical College and Hospital (ANMMCH) in Gaya district reported at least 65 admissions from four districts in the division, making it the second major encephalitis outbreak to occur in the state within a span of less than two months.

Government-owned Steel Authority of India (SAIL) has decided to set up 10 more steel-processing units across the country, once its expansion programme of ramping up hot metal capacity from the present 14 million tonne (mt) to 24 mt per annum is completed by 2013.

Alarmingly deficient monsoon rains, canals with little water and defunct tube wells have brought back the fear of a drought in large parts of Bihar for the second consecutive year. Sensing the farmers

Patna: Sixteen persons, including three children, were killed and more than 25 injured when a high velocity storm struck eastern Bihar on Friday morning.

This is the second instance of a thunderstorm hitting the State after a Nor'wester hit West Bengal, Bihar and Assam last month, claiming more than 130 lives and rendering lakhs of people homeless.