Anti-Bird Flu Work Intensified

Pyongyang, March 25 (KCNA) -- The government of the DPRK is pushing ahead with the anti-bird flu work as a permanent one. Kim Yong Suk, vice-chairwoman of the State Emergency Anti-Epidemic Commission (SEAC), told KCNA that today the bird influenza, malignant infectious disease is spreading wider in the world without dying down, adding that it is imperative to continue to direct much effort to the work. A bird flu case has not been reported in the country since the formation of the SEAC, she went on, because the bird flu prevention work has been done forcefully as a nation-wide and all-people work. As part of the anti-bird flu work, survey districts have been set up in the areas through which winter migrants move mainly and the study on the movement has been intensified to grasp the species of birds, their movement and inhabitation and others. In particular, a concrete survey has been done on the summer migrants including oriole, hoopoe and cuckoo and the transit birds including snipe, which fly from the bird flu-stricken Southeast Asia and efforts have been made to prevent them from coming close to the poultry farms and villages. Meanwhile, a scientific research has been conducted to prevent bird influenza. In this course, the Cell and Gene Engineering Branch of the State Academy of Sciences established a swift differentiation method to find out the bird flu virus at any time by the method of analyzing gene. And the Veterinary Medicine Research Institute of the Academy of Agricultural Science has achieved many successes in the work of developing and introducing the quick diagnostic technology of bird flu. A hygienic and epizootic prevention campaign against avian flu has been strengthened than ever before throughout the country. While conducting hygienic propaganda briskly among the people to give deep common knowledge on the bird flu to them, medical workers examine their health thoroughly. Cold prognostication centres have been set up in the densely populated areas to collect information and take steps for the prevention of cold among the people every day and a special medical check-up for the working people in the poultry field, inhabitants living in the areas through which migrants move and employees of zoos in different parts of the country is being done and they are put under special medical observation. The DPRK will persistently continue bird flu prevention work in close contact with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations