Dhaka, Mar 14 (bdnews24.com) — The first case of human infection of avian influenza or bird flu this year has been detected in Dhaka, confirms the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR).
IEDCR director Mahmudur Rahman told bdnews24.com that the human infection was confirmed on Monday after testing the samples of saliva and nasal swab of a 13-month-old girl running temperature, who visited an influenza surveillance centre recently.
The surveillance centre is run jointly by the IEDCR and International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases and Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), he said.
Family members of the child were also examined, said the IEDCR director, adding that the minor girl, undergoing treatment in IEDCR supervision, was out of danger.
IEDCR was also examining the areas where the child visited with her parents this year, Mahmud said.
He informed that it was the second case of avian influenza (H5N1) in humans in the country.
Bird flu was detected in a 16-month-old child from the same area in 2008 and health department disclosed it September that year.
The IEDCR director, however, urged everyone not to panic for this. "There is nothing to panic as the degree of infections in the girl is very low," he said.
Frequent bird flu outbreaks in the poultry farms at different places in the country earlier stoked fears of a serious health threat to Bangladeshis.
"The virus (H5N1) can pass on to humans from poultry any time given the present situation. It's a public health concern," says Dr ASM Alamgir, an influenza expert with the World Health Organisation's Dhaka office.
He says in areas currently experiencing avian influenza outbreaks in poultry, the practice of marketing live birds may pose a significant risk to the people involved.
"Even people should try to avoid coming into close contact with pigeons and crows unnecessarily, as lab tests found the presence of H5N1 in crows during the mass death in 2008 in Dhaka and Chittagong."
He suggests people consume well-cooked poultry products and maintain bio-security in farms.
Avian flu has so far killed 306 people out of 518 infected in 15 countries and most of these cases have been linked to close contact with infected poultry or their secretions.
Bangladesh can be a hot spot for emerging infectious and costly diseases such as bird flu because of population growth and movement, urbanisation, changes in food production and other factors, researches say.
IEDCR advises doctors to take history of exposure to sick poultry while seeing patients with serious respiratory illness, who might have contracted the deadly strain of human avian influenza virus.
Livestock experts say maintaining bio-security in poultry farms is the key to stave off the avian influenza that also brings colossal damage to the poultry industry with each strike.
The world's first outbreak of bird flu among humans occurred in Hong Kong in 1997, when it claimed six lives. That outbreak was linked to chickens and classified as H5N1.
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