No small pox outbreak: Govt

The Union health ministry today dismissed reports of outbreak of small pox in Myanmar and Bangladesh as a "false alarm" and asked the people not to panic.

"It is a false alarm," Health Secretary Naresh Dayal said today.

He said the World Health Organisation had confirmed that there was no outbreak of small pox in both the countries following which an general alarm was sounded in West Bengal, particularly in the northern districts close to the border.

"There is no outbreak of small pox in these countries. We received a message from the Ministry of External Affairs about the reported outbreak," he said.

He said as WHO, which is the only agency that stockpiles the vaccines, is the authority to confirm the news, the ministry approached it.

"They (WHO) checked with them (the authorities of the two countries) and found the reports to be false," he said.

Small pox was eradicated from the world in 1977, he said. Last case was reported in Bangladesh in 1975.

Earlier, West Bengal Health Minister Suryakanata Mishra said the WHO's South Asia office had informed the National Institute of Communicable Diseases in Delhi that it is not small pox that has infected some people in Myanmar.

He, however, said that people coming in from Bangladesh through land borders or at the airports were being screened.

"The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) at Atlanta in the USA has been contacted on the issue," he said, adding that at present there was no preventive medicine for small pox as WHO had several years back declared that small pox had been eradicated.

Alarmed by the reported outbreak of small pox at Rajshahi district in Bangladesh, the West Bengal government had yesterday sounded a general alert in the state's northern districts.

The state government has deployed the police at seven border points to check people crossing over from Bangladesh.