With the sudden spurt in the cases of suspected swine flu (H1N1) in Kalaburagi, the City Corporation authorities with the help of an animal rights group launched the operation to catch stray pigs in the city on Thursday and leave them in wastelands, 30 km away.
Keshav Motigi, the President of the Nandi Animal Welfare society, told The Hindu that the Society, which had been entrusted the responsibility of catching the pigs and banishing them from the city has so far caught more than 350 stray pigs in the city and transported them out of the city.
Mr. Motigi said the society was doing the service of banishing the pigs from Kalaburagi city free of cost and “the operation to catch the pigs would continue and more than 30 professional pig catchers were being used for catching them in different localities”. He said that in few localities there were protests and resistance when a few places saw people pelting stones on persons who were involved in catching the stray pigs.
Mr Motigi said that with the help of the police the stray pigs caught were transported out of the city. City Corporation Commissioner Shrikant Kattimani said the operation to banish the pigs from the city would continue till the catching of every single animal.
Suspected cases of H1N1
Meanwhile, The District Health and Family Welfare Officer Mohammad Zakir Ansari has said as many as 26 suspected cases of H1N1 have been reported in the city and of them two cases were confirmed as suffering from H1N1 in the last one week. While one of the confirmed case of H1N1 has been shifted to a higher centre in Hyderabad, another patient is undergoing treatment in the Government General Hospital.
Dr. Ansari said that all precautionary measures and awareness campaign has been launched in all the villages and more than 1,500 TamiFlu tablets used for treating the disease has been supplied to all the taluk hospitals and primary health centres in the district. There was no shortage of the medicines.
