H5N1 in Bangladesh
Recombinomics Commentary
March 22, 2007
Bangladesh confirmed Thursday its first case of bird flu, prompting mass culling of poultry at a farm outside the capital Dhaka, officials said.
Bangladesh is home to hundreds of thousands of poultry farms which employ more than a million people
The above comments confirm the detection of H5N1 in Bangladesh. Because of Bengladesh’s proximity to India, detection of H5N1 is not a surprise. Birds that migrate to Qinghai Lake in the spring winter in northern India. Although H5N1 was acknowledged last year in western India, there have been no confirmed cases in the wild birds that migrate to Qinghai Lake. This year media reports described the detection of bird flu in northeastern India, but those reports were not officially confirmed.
The presence of H5N1 in Bangladesh may provide of view of H5N1 in northeastern India. The sequences reported last year in India were the Qinghai strain, although the HA was distinct from previously described Qinghai sequences, and the NA sequence was not Qinghai, indicating the H5N1 reported in India were reassortants, signaling dual infections and significant levels of H5N1.
H5N1 in Bangladesh is also a cause for concern because it is the most densely populated country in the world and has a significant poultry population.
Media sources
Phylogenetic Trees