February 27, 2014

 

North Korea seeks UN assistance over FMD outbreak

 

 

In a bid to combat the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), North Korea has appealed to the United Nations for help, but has yet to reply to an offer of assistance from South Korea.

 

The request of Pyongyang, North Korea was made through the Rome headquarters of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, with Yonhap News reporting that the UN intends to dispatch a team of experts to North Korea to assess the scale and severity of the outbreak.

 

The source of the outbreak has been traced to a pig farm on the outskirts of Pyongyang. Since the first case was reported in early January, some 360 pigs have died of the disease and a further 2,900 have been slaughtered at 17 sites in and around the city.

 

Despite efforts to stop the disease spreading, North Korea lacks vaccines, disinfectants and methods of identifying the disease.

 

In order to contain the first outbreak of FMD in North Korea in about three years, South Korea offered to provide aid to the communist country. South Korea offered to provide disinfectants and vaccines to the North, at the same time suggesting that the two governments hold talks on further humanitarian assistance to the North.

 

The move came just days after the North confirmed that the animal disease broke out at a pig farm in a suburb of Pyongyang on January 8, and has since spread to 17 areas of Pyongyang and a county near the North's capital.

 

The North said since April 2011 it has killed 2,900 pigs and buried about 360 pigs that died from the outbreak of the disease. Due to lack of vaccines, diagnostic means and disinfectants, the disease continues to spread.

 

The World Organization for Animal Health said the North reported the outbreak more than a month after it broke out, without explaining why.

 

FMD is an infectious and sometimes fatal one that affects cloven-hoofed animals such as pigs, cattle, deer and sheep.

 

South Korean media have described the offers as the latest effort to ease tensions across the border, although Seoul has received no reply yet.

 

A meeting to discuss Seoul's humanitarian assistance to the North was also proposed by South Korea, the unification ministry official said.

 

In its annual report, South Korea's ministry of agriculture has proposed significantly increasing its humanitarian and economic assistance to the North's farming sector this year. The aid could include equipment for famers, greenhouses and the creation of joint farming and reforestation projects.