UN bird flu expert sent to North Korea outbreak
A UN veterinary expert has been sent to North Korea to assess a bird flu outbreak there and offer assistance in trying to prevent the spread of the virus, the world body’s agricultural agency said today.
North Korea acknowledged an outbreak of bird flu for the first time on Sunday, saying hundreds of thousands of chickens were killed to prevent its spread, but no humans have caught the disease. It did not give other details, including the strain of the disease.
Authorities in North Korea, one of the world’s poorest and most secretive countries where millions of people are chronically undernourished, have informed the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation about bird flu outbreaks on two or three farms, said the agency said in a statement released in Bangkok.
The agency said it has sent a veterinary expert and diagnostic kits to the North. It added two more bird flu experts from China and Australia are expected to arrive in the coming days in the North Korean capital Pyongyang.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported yesterday that North Korean authorities were struggling to control the outbreak, and the disease was spreading quickly.
Hundreds of millions of poultry died or were culled when the potent H5N1 bird flu strain began ravaging farms across Asia in December 2003. The disease jumped to humans, killing at least 48 people in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.
International health experts worry that the virus could mutate and be transmitted more easily from human to human, triggering a global pandemic.
Poultry production is one of the few growing sectors in North Korea. The number of poultry was estimated at 25.5 million in 2004, about two times higher than in 1997.
“In the wake of serious food shortages, the supply of animal protein has been very limited in North Korea,” the UN statement said. “The recovering poultry sector could contribute to improve the nutrition of the country’s population of around 22.5 million people.”
A national workshop on bird flu, organised by the government and the FAO, will be held soon in North Korea to improve awareness of the disease and prevention methods, the statement said.
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