East of the Bangladesh border with West Bengal, 26 kilometres from Dinajpur, villagers in Khodshippur and Ratnur are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Starting on 26 January, the Dhaka government frantically called for the massive slaughtering of backyard stocks of chickens and ducks, in this area and elsewhere. Since then, in the middle of the night, national culling committees, with help of local labour, have searched affected villages for chickens and ducks – collecting the birds, twisting their heads, and burying them underground beneath a layer of lime. In less than a month, 700,000 chickens have been killed in this way.
The current avian-influenza outbreak has wreaked havoc on one of Bangladesh's most important sectors, the poultry industry, upon which roughly 60 percent of the country's population depends, in one form or another. On 22 January, the news broke that multiple outbreaks were taking place in both Bangladesh and India; over the course of the following two weeks, more than 450,000 chickens were killed in 38 out of Bangladesh's 64 districts, particularly in northwestern border areas abutting West Bengal. By the first week of February, the virus had reached urban areas in Dhaka and Chittagong, where hundreds of dead, infected crows were suddenly being found on the streets (see pic). Given the high human population densities in these areas, the longstanding fears of a looming pandemic mounted.
Although it remains a matter of significant debate as to where exactly the outbreak began, following 22 January border entry points were immediately sealed by both the Bangladeshi and Indian governments. Significant recrimination also began emanating from India, placing the blame squarely on Bangladesh. For its part, the Dhaka government has been relatively quiet as to where it believes the outbreak began. One way or another, many suggest that Bangladesh's government can now do little more than react. "It is already too late for the government to take any measure for bird-flu prevention," says M M Khan, a technical adviser to the Bangladesh Poultry Industries Association. "Bangladesh has already been identified as one of the three worst bird-flu endemic regions," he notes, after Indonesia and Egypt.
Meanwhile, across the border in West Bengal, where health officials were dealing with India's largest-yet outbreak of bird flu, almost 2.4 million birds were culled during the last week of January and the first week of February. The official target was later raised to 2.8 million, at which point Indian officials claimed 'victory' over the virus. No such claims have yet been made in Bangladesh.