PYONGYANG, April 9 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been fighting an outbreak of bird flu since last month, culling tens of thousands of poultry so far, official news agency KCNA reported Wednesday.
A chicken farm in the capital first reported signs of avian influenza (AI), known as the H5N1 virus, on March 21, and the virus has spread to other poultry farms, KCNA reported, citing Agriculture Ministry director Ri Kyung Kun.
"(We) are suffering from extensive economic damage as tens of thousands (of poultry) have either fallen dead or been culled," the report said.
As part of efforts to control the highly contagious virus, the DPRK authorities "set up an emergency quarantine commission and declared an emergency prevention situation across the nation," it said.
"(The government) has controlled the traffic, come up with quarantine measures and buried the culled. But the disease shows no sign of dying down and continues to spread," the KCNA said. The country was hard hit by AI last year.
The KCNA also confirmed an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in cows, which was first spotted in Kangwon Province near the border on March 14, but gave no details.
In February, the DPRK said an FMD outbreak at a pig farm in a Pyongyang suburb led to the culling of thousands of pigs.
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