Myanmar reports first bird flu case
Myanmar has become the latest country to report an outbreak of bird flu.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan is checking to see if it too is infected by the deadly disease.
Underscoring bird flu's rapid spread around the globe, Cameroon became the fourth African country to report an outbreak of bird flu on Sunday, joining Nigeria, Egypt and Niger, which have reported cases of the H5N1 flu virus in poultry.
In a matter of weeks, H5N1 has spread deep into Europe, taken hold in Africa and flared anew in Asia.
While richer nations have the resources to battle the disease, impoverished nations lack equipment, money, trained personnel or programmes to educate the public, raising the risk of the virus quickly taking hold in poultry and infecting people.
Military-ruled Myanmar is seen by some international health experts as a potential black hole in the global fight against the disease but a UN official in Yangon said authorities are cooperating.
Another UN official in Bangkok said there were no signs of human infections from bird flu.
"They have carried out some tests and they believe that they have identified H5N1," Laurence Gleeson, of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Bangkok, said.
The case emerged on March 8 after 112 chickens died on a farm near Mandalay, about 430 miles north of Yangon.
Officials destroyed a flock of 780 birds and sent samples for testing at government laboratories in Mandalay and Yangon.
In impoverished Afghanistan, the government and the UN said the H5 subtype of the bird flu virus has been found in a small number of poultry but it was not yet known if it was the deadly H5N1 strain.
"H5 has been found in five samples in Afghanistan. The N sub-type, we're expecting that to be determined, possibly in a matter of hours," UN spokesman Adrian Edwards told the news conference.
Myanmar has become the latest country to report an outbreak of bird flu.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan is checking to see if it too is infected by the deadly disease.
Underscoring bird flu's rapid spread around the globe, Cameroon became the fourth African country to report an outbreak of bird flu on Sunday, joining Nigeria, Egypt and Niger, which have reported cases of the H5N1 flu virus in poultry.
In a matter of weeks, H5N1 has spread deep into Europe, taken hold in Africa and flared anew in Asia.
While richer nations have the resources to battle the disease, impoverished nations lack equipment, money, trained personnel or programmes to educate the public, raising the risk of the virus quickly taking hold in poultry and infecting people.
Military-ruled Myanmar is seen by some international health experts as a potential black hole in the global fight against the disease but a UN official in Yangon said authorities are cooperating.
Another UN official in Bangkok said there were no signs of human infections from bird flu.
"They have carried out some tests and they believe that they have identified H5N1," Laurence Gleeson, of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Bangkok, said.
The case emerged on March 8 after 112 chickens died on a farm near Mandalay, about 430 miles north of Yangon.
Officials destroyed a flock of 780 birds and sent samples for testing at government laboratories in Mandalay and Yangon.
In impoverished Afghanistan, the government and the UN said the H5 subtype of the bird flu virus has been found in a small number of poultry but it was not yet known if it was the deadly H5N1 strain.
"H5 has been found in five samples in Afghanistan. The N sub-type, we're expecting that to be determined, possibly in a matter of hours," UN spokesman Adrian Edwards told the news conference.
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