Live Poultry Banned in Dhaka Bangladesh
Recombinomics Commentary 19:29
February 5, 2008
The government is banning sale of live chickens or birds in the city from today (Wednesday).
The deadly H5N1 strain has already spread to 133 farms and the number of bird flu affected districts in the country has risen to 37 out of total 64 districts till yesterday as bird flu continued to take its toll of the flourishing economic sector.
The above comments describe the banning of the sale of live poultry in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The ban follows panic stemming from the discovery of dead crows in the capital.
Recently, H5N1 was confirmed in the port city of Chittagong, where hundreds of dead crows were found, in the absence of confirmed poultry infections in the city. Similarly, large numbers of dead crows in the north have also been H5N1 confirmed (see satellite maps here and here).
The dead crows signal a major expansion of H5N1 within Bangladesh, with reports of H5N1 in new districts being reported daily.
In neighboring West Bengal, 3 million birds have been culled and 2 million in adjacent districts are targeted for precautionary culling.
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