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Bangladesh: Conflicting Bird Flu Reports

 

 


# 5564

 

 

We’ve a curious report today in the Financial Express – the only English language financial daily in Bangladesh – on the level of bird flu activity in that country.

 

Since 2007 we’ve often heard of outbreaks of the H5N1 bird flu virus on poultry farms, and the OIE (to whom reporting of H5 & H7 avian flu is mandatory) lists 34 reports totaling 514 outbreaks since May of that year.

 

 image

(Photo Credit – OIE Bangladesh H5N1)

The last OIE notification was on May 12th of 2011, which noted 3 recent outbreaks,  and the total number of poultry affected since 2007 is listed as just under 640,000.

 

image

(Photo Credit – OIE Bangladesh H5N1 Stats)

 

Which makes the following story in the Financial Express - wherein an Industry leader puts the number of outbreaks at 20 times higher – a bit hard to reconcile.

 

A hat tip to Carol@SC on the Flu Wiki for this link.

 

 

Bird flu wreaks havoc in poultry industry: official

 

Dhaka, Friday July 1 2011

Doulot Akter Mala


A third of the country's farm-raised chicken has been decimated by the latest outbreak of the bird-flu, a top poultry farmer has said Thursday, demanding compensation for the affected farms.

 

He told the FE the government needed to roll up its sleeve and help the affected farms with compensation and vaccines in an effort to prevent Avian Influenza from inflicting a mortal blow to the key industry.

 

"We've estimated that 10,000 to 15,000 poultry firms have been affected by bird-flu. Unfortunately the government shows it only 153," said Syed Abu Siddique, president of the Bangladesh Poultry Industries Association,

(Continue . . . )


 

This makes for a sizeable discrepancy between the claims made by the President of the Bangladesh Poultry Industries Association and what has been officially reported to the OIE.

 

The accuracy of either number is difficult to verify, since the OIE can only report what is voluntarily submitted to them.

 

And between this report, and others, there is obviously a good deal of political pressure being exerted in Bangladesh over current and future tax breaks for the poultry Industry, compensation for culled birds, and the importation of vaccine.

 

A cause that would be bolstered by higher poultry losses.

 

There is also the possibility that Siddique is including LPAI outbreaks – such as H9N2 – in his numbers, although only H5N1 is mentioned in the article.

 

We are left with a bit of a mystery it seems.

 

And while I am a bit skeptical that 95% of the outbreaks in Bangladesh are going unreported - that country remains one of the hotspots for bird flu activity in the world - and so it deserves our continued attention.

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