Bangladesh Kills More Than 27,000 Chickens And Ducks After Bird Flu Outbreak

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Livestock officials slaughtered more than 27,000 chickens and ducks in northern Bangladesh after bird flu was confirmed at a poultry farm near the border with India, a report said Friday.

Officials in India's West Bengal state, which borders Bangladesh, have been struggling to contain that country's worst-ever outbreak of the virulent H5N1 bird flu virus.

Meanwhile, a heron found dead Monday outside an aviary at a popular Hong Kong theme park has tested positive for the virus, the government said Friday.

In Bangladesh, several hundred chickens died at the poultry farm in Dinajpur district, 170 miles north of Dhaka, and laboratory tests confirmed that the H5N1 virus was responsible, the United News of Bangladesh news agency reported.

Local livestock official Sydur Rahman said more than 27,000 chickens and ducks were killed and more than 60,000 eggs were destroyed on Thursday and Friday in an attempt to halt the spread of the virus, the agency said health club.

Local officials were not immediately available for comment Friday.

On Thursday, the government warned the Department of Livestock that more precautions were needed to prevent the disease from spreading.

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Experts say any widespread outbreak could be disastrous for Bangladesh because of its dense population and poorly equipped public health care system.

Bird flu has been confirmed in at least 30 of Bangladesh's 64 districts and has struck more than 97 farms since it was first detected in February last year health club. More than 350,000 birds have been slaughtered, according to the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock.

No cases of human infection have been reported.

Bangladesh recently tightened controls along its porous border with India, with authorities ordering officials to block all imports of poultry and eggs from that country.

In India, more than 129,000 poultry have died from bird flu in West Bengal state in recent weeks and nearly 2.5 million at-risk birds have been slaughtered, according to Anisur Rahaman, the animal resource development minister.health club Officials fear the disease could reach crowded Calcutta and its 14 million people.

In neighboring Pakistan, authorities said they ordered the slaughter of thousands of chickens on farms near the country's largest city, Karachi, after a laboratory confirmed the presence of H5N1 on farms where a number of wild birds had died.

"We are getting the infected birds killed in the Gadap area, and dozens of health teams have been dispatched to screen workers at the farms," said Dr. Ali Akbar Soomro, director at the provincial livestock department.

He said they were also investigating the December deaths of two men in Pakistan's first recorded human deaths from bird flu. The two are believed to have come in contact with infected birds.

In Hong Kong, several tests on a black-crowned night heron found dead at Ocean Park confirmed the H5N1 diagnosis, the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said in a statement.

Last year, Hong Kong discovered 21 wild birds infected with H5N1, but it has not suffered a major outbreak of the disease since 1997, when the virus killed six people, prompting the government to slaughter the entire poultry population of about 1.5 million birds.

The virus remains hard for people to catch, but experts worry it could mutate into a form that passes easily among people, igniting a flu pandemic. Most human cases have been traced to contact with infected birds. H5N1 has killed at least 224 people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.