Bangladesh is a South Asian country with large human and poultry populations which is highly affected with frequent outbreaks of both high and low pathogenic avian influenza since 2007. Very few studies have been carried out to reveal the farm biosecurity at backyard poultry that might have contributed to the spread of avian influenza in Bangladesh, specially rural areas. Therefore, we aimed to characterize biosecurity practices of poultry farm including the movement of live birds which is a well-known risk factor for the geographic dissemination of the virus among poultry flocks and personnel hygiene of poultry workers for rapid detection and effective risk management of incursion of HPAI and LPAI viruses.
Objective:
We have conducted this study to characterise the movement and contact patterns of poultry in Bangladesh that could be associated with transmission of newly-introduced subtypes of avian influenza virus in two districts of Bangladesh as well as to summarise the patterns arising from the network analysis in a way that can inform the parameterisation of spatially explicit stochastic models of transmission of newly-introduced subtypes of avian influenza virus in the two types of areas.