June 11, 2007

Bird flu spreading in Bangladesh

Bird flu has continued to spread in Bangladesh despite efforts to control the disease, forcing authorities to cull 3,000 chickens over the weekend, officials said on Sunday (Jun 10).

The infected chickens were found at a farm in Dinajpur district 450 km (280 miles) northwest of the capital Dhaka.

This brings the total of 160,000 chickens slaughtered and 1.5 million eggs destroyed on 62 farms since the virus was first detected in March.

Authorities have since inspected more than 100,000 farms and some 125 million chickens have been vaccinated since the outbreak.

The World Bank last week pledged more than US$30 million to a Bangladesh project to fight bird flu until 2012.