Feb 12, 2008, 13:50 GMT
Dhaka - Bangladesh struggling to control a raging bird flu epidemic in poultry farms across the country has sought Chinese help in vaccinating unaffected fowls in a desperate move to stop the further march of the scourge, media reports said Tuesday.
The Chinese strategy of rolling back the disaster centres on the deployment of a preventive vaccine created by researchers in China which has been claimed to be effective against the H5N1 bird flu virus, the daily Bangladesh Observer said.
The H5N1, called the Avian Influenza virus, is held responsible for the death of billions of chickens in both poultry farms and backyard gardens around the world since 2003.
'The government is likely to seek Chinese assistance for better tackling the virus spreading fast in the country and risking public health,' the newspaper said.
Over half a million poultry birds have been culled at different places in the country since the first outbreak of the virus in Bangladesh in February 2006.
Livestock officials in the capital Dhaka were reviewing other ways of facing the epidemic more effectively and less costly than slaughtering the infected fowls and incinerating their carcasses.
Experts said the probability of human infection rises when the disease becomes endemic among fowl in densely populated places.
Bangladesh was yet to detect a human infection by the bird flu virus, but experts fear the virus might mutate to facilitate entry into the human body.
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