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S. Korea says second bird flu case suspected

Iran Materials 28 November 2006 13:49 (UTC +04:00)

(thanhniennews) - S. Korea's farm ministry has said it had found a second suspected case of highly pathogenic bird flu at a poultry farm, after confirming on Saturday it had its first outbreak in three years of the H5N1 strain, reports Trend.

The ministry said on Tuesday the second suspected case was at a poultry farm near where the first case had been found and they are checking to see if the virus has spread through the country.

South Korea has nearly completed culling all 236,000 poultry within a 500 meter radius of a farm in North Cholla province about 170 km (100 miles) south from Seoul where officials said the H5N1 avian influenza strain had been detected.

The quarantine will also include culling about 300 pigs and 600 dogs within the area.

"We finished culling of all poultry at the infected farm on Saturday and began slaughtering other poultry near the farm from Monday," said an official at the Agriculture ministry.

Quarantine authorities also banned the shipment of more than 5 million poultry from 221 farms within a 10-km (6.2-mile) radius of the farm.

North Korea is also stepping up measures to prevent bird flu, its official media said on Monday.

North Korea, which had an outbreak of bird flu at two poultry farms near Pyongyang in February 2005, said it had inoculated poultry and increased checks along its borders.

In South Korea, between December 2003 and March 2004, about 400,000 poultry at South Korean farms were infected by bird flu.

During that outbreak, the country culled 5.3 million birds and spent about 1.5 trillion won ($1.6 billion) on preventing the disease spreading, officials said.

Since 2003, outbreaks have been confirmed in around 50 countries and territories, according to the World Organization for Animal Health.

The World Health Organization said that by Nov. 13, there had been 258 cases of human infection of the H5N1 strain since 2003, killing 153 people. Many of the victims were Asians, with 98 deaths in Vietnam and Indonesia, WHO said.

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