H5N1 Spead In Bangladesh Raises Credibility Issues in India
Recombinomics Commentary 19:37
February 13, 2008
Our Khulna correspondent adds: Khulna district livestock department has culled 13,702 fowls from 73 poultry farms during a massive operation in the city on Tuesday night.
Anisuzzaman Panna, president of Khulna District Poultry Farm Owners Association, said that he believes that bird flu infection is fast reaching epidemic proportions in the area.
The above comments describe one of the culling operations in Bangladesh. Daily updates from the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock describe multiple culling operations throughout the country each day.
The latest report increases the number of districts with confirmed H5N1 to 41. The latest addition, Mehepur, is on the western border shared with West Bengal (see satellite maps here here here). In the past week, the number of cullings since H5N1 was first reported almost a year ago, jumped from 179 to 239 and the number of districts has increased from 37 to 41.
While these dramatic increases were being reported in Bangladesh, including multiple districts that share a border with West Bengal, India has been denying new outbreaks and has been winding down culling operations, although precautionary culling has been on going in regions adjacent to West Bengal, even though the adjacent regions have not reported H5N1 outbreaks.
The absence of reported new infections in West Bengal raises serious credibility issues. Bangladesh has confirmed H5N1 in wild birds, including thousands of crow deaths in border regions. Although West Bengal has also reported dead crows, they have yet to confirm H5N1 in any wild bird. The deaths of resident dead birds are in addition to migratory birds, which have died with bird flu symptoms, yet India has never reported an H5N1 positive wild bird, even though the birds that winter in India fly to China, Russia, and Mongolia in the spring and summer to sites where H5N1 in migratory birds has been confirmed.
Similarly, neither Bangladesh nor India has ever reported a human case of H5N1, even though H5N1 is widespread in both countries, and villagers engage in risky activities and develop bird flu symptoms.
The lack of human cases in both countries, or positive wild birds in India, remain causes for concern.
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