February 17, 2009

Bangladesh's authorities have so far culled about 10,500 chickens this year following fresh outbreak of bird flu, a senior government official said on Monday (Feb 16).

Bangladesh's Fisheries and Livestock Department director Muhammad Salehuddin Khan said they have culled over 8,500 chickens in January after detecting bird flu in some commercial farms and households across the country.

Khan said that around 2,000 birds have been culled this month, including 1,200 on Monday after detecting the disease in two commercial firms at central Manikgonj and Narayangonj districts and one household in capital Dhaka.

Fresh outbreak of bird flu was detected in Bangladesh in December last year with the arrival of winter season when authorities said that they culled nearly 10,000 chickens in 5 out of all 64 districts of the country.

Khan expected that there will not be massive outbreak of the disease this time, as it is near to the end of the winter season, which is the period of time with higher bird flu outbreaks.

He said special steps have been taken like motivating farmers to adopt preventive measures since the disease found to reemerge in December 2008 to contain its outbreak.

The bird flu was first detected in Bangladesh in a poultry farm near capital city Dhaka in March 2007.

The situation deteriorated later on as the virus spread fast across the country with the H5N1 virus outbreaks reported in 47 districts of the country between December 2007 and March 2008.

About 50 percent of the country's 150,000 poultry farms were closed and more than 1.5 million chickens, ducks and pigeons were culled as of the end of March last year.