H5N1 strain of bird flu infects more Bangladeshi farms

Health authorities in Bangladesh have culled nearly 20,000 chickens after the H5N1 bird flu virus was detected at a government poultry farm in the Bangladesh capital. The latest infection of the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus occurred at the farm in Mirpur, on the outskirts of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka.

The virus was first detected at a state-owned poultry farm near the capital in March and has since spread mainly to northern districts, forcing authorities to cull more than 300,000 chickens. Since then, 69 farms in 20 districts have been infected with the bird flu virus.

On Sunday, the officials slaughtered 19,200 chickens and a few thousand eggs after the lethal H5N1 strain of avian influenza was detected at the Mirpur farm, said Salahuddin Khan, director of the government's livestock department.

According to farm manager Tulsi Das Saha, chickens started getting sick at the farm on December 19, and tests at the Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute confirmed the presence of bird flu. However, it’s still ambiguous how the chickens were actually infected with the disease.

The bird flu infection was also detected in two villages in Gaibandha district, about 350 km from the capital Dhaka, where 2,600 chickens were culled on Sunday. The virus was also detected at a private farm in Savar, an industrial town near Dhaka, forcing authorities to kill 1,000 more chicken.

Officials say Bangladesh’s poultry industry encompasses around 150,000 poultry farms, with an annual turnover of $750 million.

The poultry industry in Bangladesh is highly vulnerable to Avian Influenza virus because of its geographical location and dependence on chicken imports. Nearly four million people in the country are directly or indirectly associated with poultry farming.

Fortunately, no human cases of infection have been reported so far in the densely populated country.

In a news conference on Tuesday, the government's adviser for livestock, C.S. Karim, said, "There is no cause for immediate panic ... we are closely monitoring the bird flu situation. We will make it mandatory for all poultry farms to register in order to ensure proper monitoring."

"We have asked all (villagers and bird lovers) not to be close to the guest birds that fly in every winter, because they may carry the deadly virus," he added.

H5N1, also known as A(H5N1), is a subtype of the Influenza A virus that is capable of causing illness in many animal species, including humans, while a bird-adapted strain of H5N1, called HPAI A(H5N1) for "highly pathogenic avian influenza virus of type A of subtype H5N1", is the causative agent of H5N1 flu, commonly known as "avian influenza" or simply "bird flu", and is endemic in many bird populations, especially in Southeast Asia.

The H5N1 virus though remains primarily a virus of birds, but experts fright that once it starts transmitting from person to person, it would sweep the world, leaving millions more to die and triggering a devastating human pandemic.

Since the virus re-emerged in Asia in 2003, the deadly H5N1 strain has infected more than 340 people and killed 213 of them, mostly in Southeast Asia, and the outbreaks have been confirmed in around 50 countries and territories, according to data from the Geneva– based World Health Organization.