has been detected, health officials said Thursday, calling on residents of this impoverished South Asian nation not to panic. A child from a slum in the capital, Dhaka, was found to be infected by the virus in January and treated for respiratory trouble, the Directorate General of Health Services said in a statement, adding that the child was recovering.
The details were released after Bangladesh received confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the statement said.
Mahmudur Rahman of the health ministry said the victim was a 16-month old boy. No other details on the case have been released.
Scientists fear that the H5N1 strain of bird flu virus _ which began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003 _ could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, potentially sparking a pandemic that kills millions. So far, most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.
In its latest report released at the end of April the World Health Organization said 382 people have come down with bird flu since 2003, and 241 of them have died.
Bangladesh is the 15th country to report a human case of virus, according to the WHO.
Experts say an outbreak could be particularly calamitous for Bangladesh, a nation of some 150 million people.
“It’s a very, very bad signal for us,” said M. M. Khan, an adviser to the Bangladesh Poultry Industries Association.
“Any widespread outbreak could be disastrous for Bangladesh because of a high concentration of population and a poorly equipped public health care system,” he said.
Terms of use