Nat'l Reference Lab for avian influenza opens

Fisheries and Livestock Adviser Dr CS Karim speaks at the inaugural ceremony of National Reference Laboratory for avian influenza at Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute in Savar recently.

National Reference Laboratory for avian influenza (AI) was inaugurated at Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute (BLRI) in Savar recently, says a press release.
Fisheries and Livestock Adviser Dr CS Karim was present at the inaugural ceremony as the chief guest.
The adviser said the present government believes in open and transparent policy and so it did not hide anything about the outbreak of avian influenza in the country. It took all sorts of preventive measures to save the growing poultry industry.
Syed Ataur Rahman, secretary, Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock, Einar H Jensen, ambassador, Embassy of Denmark and Nobuko Suzuki Kayshima, resident representative of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), were present as special guests at the programme.
The Danish ambassador said his country has already trained up three scientists of BLRI with modern diagnostic procedure and provided modern equipments, chemicals, and reagents for the National Reference Laboratory.
He also mentioned that the Danish Embassy in association with other international partners including FAO, USAID, JICA and World Bank will assist and cooperate the government in preventing and controlling avian influenza through upgrading the existing National Reference Laboratory and giving training to more scientists in the months to come.
Nobuko Suzuki expressed her grave concern over AI crisis and told that JICA will provide all sorts of help and assistance in future related to AI in the country.
The ceremony was presided over by Director General of BLRI Dr Jahangir Alam Khan. In his concluding speech, Alam expressed his gratitude to the development partners for their assistance and cooperation.
He also mentioned that avian influenza virus is a highly mutagenic virus. So control strategy, development of diagnostic tools and vaccine production etc. depend on the circulating strains of AI virus in the respective country.
For this reason, virus isolation, molecular characterisation and phylogenetic analysis of the circulating strains are the vital works for the scientists of NRL-AI.
But the existing laboratory corresponds to a bio-safety level-2 laboratory, which can only diagnose the virus. So, to perform proper diagnosis and advanced research works on avian influenza, a bio-safety level-3 laboratory is urgently needed.
He also urged the donor community to come forward and help upgrade the existing laboratory into a bio-safety level-3 laboratory.