More than 200 chickens died of an unknown disease in the past 10 days in Nepal's central district of Bara, causing panic among the local people who ascribed the deaths to bird flu that are spreading in some Asian countries.
  
The epidemic broke out in Bramhatole Bairiyam of Kalaiya, the district headquarters, over 100 km south of Kathmandu, The Himalayan Times newspaper on Sunday quoted Hari Raut, a local people, as saying.
  
Raut said 15 of his chickens died and two more seemed infected with the unknown disease.
  
Chandra Kishore Prasad Shah, president of the committee for municipality development, held that the chicken deaths were due to bird flu.
  
The fear of bird flu had resulted in plummeting consumption of chicken in the district, which has gone down by more than 25 percent, Shah said.
  
However, Surendra Prasad Yadav, the district veterinary office chief, said that as neither the diseased nor dead chickens were brought to the veterinary office, it was hard to tell what disease the chickens had succumbed to.
  
"No case of bird flu has been reported yet in Nepal," Yadav noted, adding that the animal and bird quarantine post in the district is keeping round-the-clock vigil.
  
Avian influenza in chickens, popularly known as "bird flu," is an infectious disease of birds caused by Type A strains of the influenza virus. Affected humans suffer fever, acute pneumonia and it can also cause death.

(Xinhua News Agency February 8, 2004)