Bird flu has hit West Bengal barely a month after India presented a roadmap for pandemic preparedness and human security at the New Delhi International Ministerial Conference on Avian and Pandemic Influenza.

Addressing the meeting, union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss waxed eloquent on the way India controlled the previous epidemics. He boasted that India's containment measures were higher than global standards. The roadmap was to provide guidelines on the measures to control avian influenza in 2008. It was also meant to be a model to be replicated by the 105 countries that attended the meeting.