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 The Indian state of Assam is working overtime to make sure it does not enter the history books as Ground Zero of a bird flu pandemic.

The message boards tracking avian influenza are humming with the news coming out of the Indian state of Assam. As you can see, Assam is located in the eastern part of India, near China, Bangladesh and Myanmar. that area of the world has again been overrun with H5N1 avian influenza.

The response from the Indian government has been formidable. The government has culled hundreds of thousands of poultry. They have rushed in hundreds of animal husbandry workers, and put them all on Tamiflu. They have gone house-to-house, looking for people with fever and upper respiratory infections.

And they have found at least 69 such cases, in both house-to-house and hospital searches. Whether or not these cases are H5N1 has not yet been released. But the Indian government is taking zero chances. And in fact, according to the veteran flu blogger from Italy named Ironorehopper, stockpiles are quite impressive. Ironorehopper reports:

-- Logistics

- 40,000 capsules of Tamiflu, 12,000 surgical masks, 1200 personal protective equipments, 400 N-95 masks, 50 bottles of tamiflu syrup and 8 ventilators have been supplied by MoHFW.
- Sufficient anti-viral drugs and PPE are in stock with the State Government.

In the meantime, West Bengal continues to wrestle with its outbreaks of H5N1 in poultry.  The government in Sikkim has ordered the disinfecting of each and every vehicle that crosses its border with West Bengal, and culling operations everywhere in the nation are intensifying.  This is a serious situation which bears close observation.