A suspected case of bird flu had been discovered in a Farm in South Korea, killing around 6,000 chickens and prompting authorities to cull thousands more
A suspected case of bird flu had been discovered in a Farm in South Korea, killing around 6,000 chickens and prompting authorities to cull thousands more, South Korea’s Farm Ministry officials said on Thursday.
While speaking in a news conference, Kim Chang-sub, a top official at the Ministry’s Quarantine department said: 'This case appears quite likely to involve highly pathogenic avian influenza.' Kim also added that the final results of our testing should be known on 25th of November 2006. The report comes as the farm being investigated lies on a migration path, the ministry said, where migratory birds typically pass through the Korean peninsula, heading south for the winter from places like Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia.Around 400,000 poultry at South Korean farms were reported for bird flu cases between December 2003 and March 2004 and now preventive measures are being strengthened in Kim said Seoul which includes keeping farm poultry indoors and checking wild bird flocks for signs of avian influenza. Subsequent testing in U.S. suspected the infection of avian virus in nine South Korean workers, who were involved in the mass cull but none of them developed any major illnesses, South Korean health officials have said.
World Organisation for Animal Health confirms the outbreak of bird flu in around 50 countries from the re-emergence of bird flu in 2003 and till now 153 people had died out of 258 cases of human infection, 98 of them being Asians.
Source-Medindia
SRI
