N Korea Intensifying Anti-Epizootic Campaign

NORTH KOREA - As bird flu has spread through most of South Korea since early April, North Korea is intensifying its measures for prevention of the sickness, the North's news outlet said.

8 May 2008

2 minute read

The North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on May 5 quoted Ri Kyong-gun, chief of the veterinary section under the State Emergency Quarantine Committee, as saying that they are intensifying the anti-epizootic campaign to prevent bird flu, which harms the national economy and people, from spreading to the North

North Korea established the emergency state committee overseeing efforts to prevent a possible outbreak of bird flu, while banning South Korean poultry products and eggs from the joint industrial complex in Kaesong, just north of the inter-Korean border, since April 26 to prevent the cross-border spread of the disease.

"The Central Epizootic Prevention Centre and the provincial epizootic prevention institutions have established an epizootic prevention system in accordance with the world avian epidemiology and set up more than 1,600 watch posts in east and west coastal areas, the main courses of seasonal bird migration," the KCNA said.

In particular, poultry are being vaccinated against avian influenza in some areas of North and South Hwanghae provinces and Kangwon Province, which border the South, the KCNA said.

North Korea destroyed 210,000 chickens during a bird flu outbreak in 2005, and since then has actively taken part in anti-epidemic programs offered by the World Health Organization.