Ishira (Birbhum-Murshidabad border), Jan. 21: Many villagers in the bird flu pockets are living in fear of the virus, ignorant about it and unaware of the dos and don’ts to avoid infection.

Across Ishira, Sandhyajol, Budhigram, Ustapara and Khameda in this area of Birbhum bordering Murshidabad, villagers have started queuing up before health centres and quacks to ask if the “new virus” had caused their fever.

In most cases, doctors are either prescribing antibiotics or suggesting a visit to “specialists” in Rampurhat town, 25 km away.

Adalat Hussain of Ishira, a farmer who also trades in cows, said: “I and my wife Apela have fever for two days. It is refusing to go. The body ache is worse — it’s there in the head, in the joints and everywhere.”

A local doctor, Gour Sen, has prescribed Amoxicillin and advised them to go to Rampurhat if the fever persists.

Kamaluddin Sheikh’s four-year-old son Rabikul also has fever. “He shivers when the fever shoots up,” said the father. “He is better after a dose of medicine, but the fever keeps coming back.”

His doctor, Nepal Banerjee, has told him that this is a “new fever” and he should consult a “boro daaktar (specialist)”.

According to experts, chances of human infection from birds are remote. Only around 300 people have been affected across the world over the past few years. But such figures mean little for panic-stricken villagers.

Many like Mihir Sutradhar of Purul went straight to the Rampurhat Subdivisional Hospital.

Fancy Bibi, the chief of the local Budhigram panchayat, said a meeting was organised yesterday to create awareness among villagers about chicken handling. “We are trying, but there is little support from the administration. People are feeling apprehensive, though they may be having the everyday fever,” Fancy said.

At the hospital, superintendent Himadri Haldar said: “We are equipped to admit patients if they turn up.”

The isolation ward at the hospital has four beds each for male and female patients.

Haldar said: “We have got Tamiflu capsules, but its indiscriminate use may lead to drug resistance.”

A camp has been set up on the ground floor of the BDO’s office in Margram, where doctors are attending to people running temperature and complaining of body ache.

Health minister Surjya Kanta Mishra said in Calcutta that 600 people with fever, cough and respiratory distress had been treated at health centres in bird flu-hit pockets. “No one is suspected to be suffering from bird flu,” he added.

The health department today sent 15 ventilators to hospitals where isolation wards have been set up.