By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter



A farmer sprays disinfectant in a chicken farm in Yangju, Kyonggi Province, as the government issued a countrywide bird flu warning, Friday. / Korea Times

The government, issuing a bird flu alert throughout the country, said Friday that it will continue an anti-bird flu campaign through February next year.
The decision was made during a meeting in which senior officials from 14 government offices attended.

South Korea also plans to propose to North Korea that the two countries jointly deal with the bird flu threat, officials said.

``We agreed to study ways of proposing to the North that cooperative action should be made to prevent the bird flu from breaking out,’’ Choi Kyoung-soo, vice minister of public policy coordination, told reporters.

He said South Korea may deliver the proposal at an inter-Korean economic cooperation meeting that is scheduled to be held later this month.

The South Korean government will closely watch the North’s anti-epidemic efforts, while intensifying quarantine measures for inter-Korean traffic. The movement of migratory birds in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which separates the two Koreas, will also be closely monitored, Choi said.

H7 strain, which experts say poses no danger of human infection, was detected in March in North Korea, but was later contained. The variety is different from the virulent H5N1 strain, which killed at least 51 people in Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia early this year.

Seoul officials decided to launch a 20-member task force, composed of government ministers and bird flu experts, to prevent the outbreak of avian influenza. It will be led by Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan.

Such inter-ministry efforts paid off two years ago when the government and civilian experts successfully prevented Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) from attacking the country.

The government will try to increase its anti-virus vaccine reserves adequate for up to 1 million people next year. Currently the vaccine is available for 700,000 people.

Poultry farms in 21 cities across the nation with history of bird flu will be under special watch with experts inspecting chickens and ducks there twice a day, Choi said. South Korea has had no reported case of bird flu since March 2004.

Experts will scrutinize samples of bird excrement in high-risk areas, such as 24 major migratory sanctuaries in South Korea. Inspections will be conducted on wild birds in the southern part of the DMZ and blood serum will be collected for checks from poultry farms and butcheries across the country.

Farmers will be asked to report all sudden deaths of birds and other suspected developments of illnesses to the authorities immediately.

Officials will continue to examine heat-treated poultry meat imported from Asian countries such as China and Thailand, which have reported cases of the disease. South Koreans will be urged to refrain from visiting poultry farms when they visit those countries.

The government decided to work more closely with the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza and the World Health Organization to prevent the bird flu from spreading globally.

im@koreatimes.co.kr