Bird flu spreading fast in Asia

March 30, 2005 - 2:29PM

South Korea has sent a message to rival North Korea offering to help it contain its first acknowledged outbreak of bird flu.

The South's Yonhap news agency said North Korean authorities were struggling to control the outbreak, and the disease was spreading quickly to provinces without adequate quarantine controls. The report cited an unidentified official involved in inter-Korean business.

North Korea's official news agency said Sunday that hundreds of thousands of chickens had been slaughtered to combat the outbreak of bird flu at several farms. It said the disease hadn't spread to humans, but gave no further details on what strain of virus was discovered.

Millions of poultry died or were slaughtered after a potent strain of bird flu emerged in Asia in December 2003. The disease jumped to humans, and has claimed the lives of at least 48 people, mostly in Vietnam and Thailand.

The South Korean government offered on Tuesday to send medical supplies and other equipment to the North to help deal with the outbreak in a telephone message left at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas, Unification Ministry spokeswoman Yang Jeong-hwa said.

The South also asked North Korea to take steps to prevent bird flu from spreading here, and asked for details about the outbreak and what was being done to counter it, Yang said.

Experts fear that the virus could mutate into a form that is easily transmissible among people, setting off a pandemic. But most of the human cases have been traced to sick birds.

Despite an international standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions, South Korea has continued offering humanitarian aid to the deeply impoverished North.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking-News/Bird-flu-spreading-fast-in-Asia/2005/03/30/1111862443102.html