South Korea Investigates More Cases Of Bird Flu

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Main Category: Bird Flu / Avian Flu
Article Date: 15 Apr 2008 - 3:00 PDT

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The government of South Korea is investigating fresh outbreaks of bird flu, including one only 70 kilometers from the capital, Seoul.

According to Yonhap News Agency, South Korea's Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries said on Monday that the latest outbreak was reported after sudden deaths in birds on a chicken farm in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, less than 70 km from Seoul.

Chief veterinary officer Kim Chang-seob told the agency:

"Judging by the way the birds died off and the large numbers involved, there is a good chance that the Pyeongtaek chicken farm has been affected by the avian influenza."

If confirmed to be the deadly strain of H5N1, the outbreak would suggest that South Korea is struggling to contain the latest resurgence of the disease which had so far been limited to the southwest of the country. Before this latest group of outbreaks, South Korea had been clear of the deadly H5N1 bird flu for over a year.

Although not yet confirmed to be the deadly strain, the authorities decided not to wait and culled all 26,000 birds at the Pyeongtaek farm.

And if confirmed, Kim said that they will go ahead with further culling around the affected area:

"If there is confirmation that the H5 strain killed the chickens, all birds raised in poultry farms within 500 meters will be destroyed independent of tests," said Kim.

If confirmed, the suspected cases in Pyeongtaek, together with three other cases reported in the Jeolla region, would bring the total cases in the latest spate of outbreaks to 36, said the ministry.

The ministry told the Yonhap agency that 20 of the 36 suspected cases have tested positive for deadly H5N1 bird flu, 14 are pending test results, and 2 were negative.

The ministry does not have a figure for the total number of birds culled in South Korea this year, but according to Yonhap, experts have hinted it is likely to exceed previous outbreaks.

"In the winter of 2003, authorities culled around 5.6 million birds, while in the outbreak of 2006, about 2.8 million birds were destroyed," reported the agency.

Until this latest outbreak, all the cases had been contained in the southwest of the country, about 320 km south of Seoul, reported Reuters at the weekend.

Quarantine restrictions have been scaled up, limiting the transport of birds, humans and vehicles in and around the affected regions.

On 7th April Reuters also reported a third new outbreak at a duck farm in Jeongeup in the southwest of the country, where quarantine workers culled 6,500 birds at the farm and several thousand others already transported elsewhere. This was after 6,000 birds had already died from the disease at the farm.

The country's first outbreak of H5N1 bird flu in over a year occurred at a chicken farm in Gimje, about 215 km south of Seoul. The government stopped the movement of over 3.5 million birds in a 10 km radius of the area and all eggs from the area were also destroyed.

South Korea has spent the equivalent of nearly 60 billion dollars on quarantine measures and has experienced seven outbreaks of deadly H5N1 between November 2006 and March 2007, said Reuters.

Hong Kong stopped importing poultry produce from South Korea on Monday 7th April.

The World Health Organization (WHO) on the 8th of April reported that there have been 379 confirmed cases of humans catching the deadly H5N1 form of bird flu worldwide, of which 239 have died, since surveillance started in 2003.

There have been no human cases of H5N1 reported from South Korea, according to the WHO.

Bird flu is a global concern because many experts believe it is only a matter of time before the virus mutates to a form where it spreads from human to human (currently humans can only get it from close contact with infected birds). Given the high mortality, such an event would trigger a devastating worldwide epidemic killing millions of people.

Source: Yonhap News Agency, Reuters, WHO.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD
Copyright: Medical News Today
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