Bird flu spreads to more farms in Bangladesh
Pastor Dale Morgan
Bird flu spreads to more farms in Bangladesh*
23 Mar 2007 14:16:55 GMT
Source: Reuters
DHAKA, March 23 (Reuters) - Bird flu has spread to six poultry farms
near Bangladesh's capital, the government said on Friday, sparking a
nationwide alert.
The United Nations also expressed concern.
C.S. Karim, the government adviser for agriculture and livestock, said
among more than 42,400 poultry on the six farms in Savar, over 12,000
had died and another 21,000 had been culled over the past few days.
The H5N1 avian flu virus has not spread to other areas of the country
and there was no cause for panic, he told a news conference. Savar is 25
km (14 miles) north of the capital.
Dr. Duangvadee Sungkhobol, representative of U.N.'s World Health
Organisation in Dhaka, said: "We are very concerned because this is a
highly densely populated country where people, animals and poultry live
very close".
"The government has taken aggressive measures to stop the spread of the
disease and that WHO has confidence it (the government) would be able to
limit the spread," she told the same news conference.
The disease was confirmed through tests by laboratories in Bangladesh
and Thailand, the government said late on Thursday.
Another U.N. official also expressed concern.
"Maybe the outbreak of avian flu started in the country weeks or months
before but the authorities took a long time to confirm it."
"We are talking to the government and relevant agencies to find out the
extent of the spread of H5N1 in Bangladesh," the official said on
Friday. They asked not to be identified.
The European Union pledged assistance.
"The EU has kept funds ready for all of Asia in case they need to fight
bird flu. All donors are contributing ... Bangladesh can use it to
tackle the flu," Stefan Frowein, head of the EU delegation in
Bangladesh, told a private television station on Friday.
"But such funds can be available through a single channel, the World
Bank," he added.
Health experts had long expected an outbreak of H5N1 because the country
is surrounded by India and Myanmar, which have reported bird flu infections.
Myanmar reported another outbreak of bird flu on Wednesday, saying a
chicken farm had been hit outside the capital, where the H5N1 virus
reappeared in four areas last month.
Bangladesh's dense population and large numbers of backyard poultry also
increased the risks of outbreaks, experts have said.
The government has banned transport of poultry from affected areas,
imposed constant monitoring of poultry farms across the country by joint
forces led by the army and health checks on people working on the farms,
Karim said.
"We have put the health network across the country on high alert and
kept one specialised hospital ready to face any emergency," the
government's health adviser, retired army major-general A.S.M. Matiur
Rahman, said.
Syed Abu Siddiq, secretary of the Bangladesh Poultry Industries
Association, said there were 125,000 small and large poultry firms in
the country, producing 250 million broilers and 6 billion eggs annually.
Annual turnover was $750 million, he said.
About four million Bangladeshis were directly or indirectly associated
with poultry farming. (Additional reporting by Nizam Ahmed and Masud Karim)