# 6198
Last week we learned of a the detection of the H5N1 virus in a vendor at a live bird market in Bangladesh (see Bangladesh: Reporting Their 4t/h H5N1 Case), making the 4th known case from that nation.
Yesterday a number of websites carried a news report (see Crofsblog Bangladesh: 3 market workers infected with H5N1 on the detection of 2 more cases.
Since then, I’ve attempted to access Bangladesh’s IEDCR (Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control & Research) to get more information, but their website has been offline until this morning.
While their site is running unusually slow, we now have access, and as you’ll see by the screen shot below, avian influenza is suddenly a hot topic.
The 2nd entry (Fifth and Sixth H5N1 Human Case In Bangladesh) is brief.
Fifth and Sixth H5N1 human case in Bangladesh
Two cases of Influenza H5N1 has been reported from the same surveillance site, as of fourth case, at live bird market in Dhaka City (South) on 04 March 2012. This was confirmed by Real time RT-PCR. It may be mentioned that they are the fifth and sixth cases of laboratory confirmed Influenza H5N1 cases of Bangladesh since the first case detected in 2008.
The fifth case is 26 year old male and sixth case is 18 year old male who had presented with history of cough. Now they are free from symptoms. Nasal and throat swab were collected and found positive for H5N1. They are also live bird market workers, like the fourth case.
They are being treated and followed up by National Rapid Response Team members from IEDCR and ICDDR,B.
They have also posted a 126-page pdf on the handling of human H5N1 cases, which unlike many of the documents on this site, is in English (not Bengali).
And lastly, a 4-page educational PDF written in Bengali – appropriately named Birdflumess.pdf.
Unlike nearly every other country that has seen H5N1 infections in humans, those detected in Bangladesh appear to have been only of mild to moderate severity, and all have recovered.
Leaving us with a bit of a mystery.
Is there something different about the virus circulating in Bangladesh, or do people in that region – due to previous exposure to avian viruses – carry some level of community immunity?
Something I’m sure researchers are eager to find out.
