Thanks to the reader who sent the link to this October 19 story in The Straits Times: Bangladesh finds more bird flu. It's not news, but this excerpt gives us a better understanding of why B2B H5N1 is such a threat to such countries:
Officials said the outbreak was a warning for the country's US$1.5 billion (S$2.2 billion) poultry industry.
Bangladesh was hit by bird flu in February 2007, and the virus made another comeback in January this year.
At the outbreak's peak, some 50 of the country's 64 districts were affected, and more than a million birds were slaughtered.
Bangladesh's poultry industry is one of the world's largest, producing 220 million chickens and 37 million ducks annually.
Industry officials said the bird flu outbreak at its peak early this year led to closure of 40 per cent of the nation's poultry farms and left half a million workers jobless.
