Bangladesh says bird flu spreading More Quickly*

11 Apr 2007 11:56:35 GMT
Source: Reuters

DHAKA, April 11 (Reuters) - Bird flu is spreading among poultry in
Bangladesh despite persistent efforts by veterinary and health personnel
to contain it, fisheries and livestock ministry officials said on Wednesday.

"The avian virus has been detected in three more farms in southern
Noakhali, northern Gaibandha and western Jessore districts," said a
spokesman of the ministry's livestock department, who declined to be named.

Jessore and Gaibandha districts are close to the Indian states of West
Bengal and Assam respectively, where bird flu broke out much earlier,
officials said.

Mohammad Abdul Motalib, s senior official of the livestock department,
said the H5N1 virus spread despite a struggle by hundreds of veterinary
and health officials to hold it in check.

Movement of chickens had been banned outside a 10 sq km (3.9 sq miles)
area around affected farms.

Nearly 77,000 chickens have been culled so far from 30 farms since the
outbreak of avian flu was confirmed simultaneously in six farms at Savar
near Dhaka on March 22.

Nearly 600 workers at the infected farms have been given a local version
of the Tamiflu anti-viral drug as a precaution, Health Ministry
officials said.

The government says it has sufficient Oseflu, the local version of
Tamiflu, produced and marketed by a Bangladesh company since last year.

No humans have tested positive for the disease in densely populated
Bangladesh.

The virus is known to have infected nearly 300 people in 12 countries
since 2003, killing more than half of them.

Human cases of bird flu have generally been linked to contact with
infected poultry. Health experts fear the virus may mutate into a form
that passes easily from human to human, causing a pandemic that could
affect millions.

Bangladesh has 125,000 small and large poultry firms producing 250
million broilers and six billion eggs annually.

About four million Bangladeshis are directly or indirectly associated
with poultry farming.