May 22, 2013

North Korea culls birds to contain H5N1 bird flu.

North Korea has culled hundreds of thousands of birds in an effort to contain the H5N1 bird flu found in a Pyongyang farm, the state media said.

The state news agency said that its scientists found ducks in the Tudan Duck Farm in the North Korean capital infected with the H5N1 virus from migratory birds. About 164,000 ducks were killed since the first case was found in April, according to the state report filed at the World Organisation for Animal Health, throwing the spotlight back on the country's vulnerable food supply.

Thousands of disease-control teams have been dispatched throughout the country "to keep a close eye on poultry and movement of wild birds", according to the state news agency, but experts say North Korea is ill-equipped to fight veterinary epidemics without foreign assistance.

Kwon Tae-jin, a director at the Korea Rural Economic Institute in Seoul, said poultry farms in North Korea are "relatively rundown" and can't afford to use antibiotics. Pyongyang is locking up the poultry to separate them from the wild birds and their droppings, contact with which may result in contagion.

The outbreak comes as millions of people in North Korea face the prospect of food shortages. UN Food and Agriculture Organization says despite a relatively stable grain harvest in 2012, supply is expected to fall short of demand in 2013 after food imports and aid dwindled.

In the past, North Korea claimed to have invented vaccines against avian flu, including H5N1, without detailing the process. Two weeks ago, the country announced it had found a vaccine against H7N9, another deadly strain causing an epidemic in China.

During the last outbreak in 2005, when at least 200,000 chickens and other poultry were killed due to another strain of avian flu, H7N7, North Korea asked international organizations for tools for diagnosis, disease control and vaccination. The World Organisation for Animal Health Director Bernard Vallat said North Korea had not made a similar request, in an interview with the Voice of America last week.

The H5N1 is a lethal subtype of avian influenza, which infected numerous bird species across Asia, Europe and Africa since it was first discovered in Southeast Asia in 2003.