Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Bangladesh monitors farm workers for bird flu
Bangladesh says it is closely monitoring about 100 workers from farms where the H5N1 bird flu virus has been confirmed in poultry.
About 50,000 chickens have been culled since the outbreak of avian flu was confirmed in nine farms near the capital Dhaka and northern Jamalpur district last week.
No humans have tested positive for the disease in Bangladesh but officials are monitoring the workers.
“We have been closely watching some 100 farm workers for suspected infection and if necessary their blood and other samples will be sent for tests,” Mahmudur Rahman, a director of the government health directorate, said.
Blood and other samples of 10 other workers from the affected poultry farms also showed they were not infected with bird flu.
Mr Rahman said Bangladesh was adequately equipped to combat human cases of H5N1 influenza.
“We have 133,000 doses of Oseflu, an effective local version of Tamiflu, to combat human-infection by bird flu,” he said.
“These are sufficient, because cases of human infection were very low in the countries where bird flu had been reported so far.”
Bangladesh has 125,000 small and large poultry firms producing 250 million broilers and 6 billion eggs annually, with annual turnover of $US750 million.
About four million Bangladeshis are directly or indirectly associated with poultry farming.
Bird flu article source: Australian Broadcasting Corp