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Alarming Foot-And-Mouth Disease Outbreaks Cited in North Korea

Outbreaks have been reported today in eight of the 13 provinces in Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), which has a livestock population of about 577,000 cattle, 2.2 million pigs and 3.5 million goats.

With the prevailing outbreaks, the United Nations today stated that around $1 million of equipment and vaccines are urgently needed to help stem outbreaks.

"Such efforts need to be followed by a more prolonged and concerted effort to modernize veterinary services in the country."- UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)

FMD does not pose a direct health threat to humans, but affected animals become too weak to be used to plough the soil or reap harvests, suffer significant weight loss, and produce less milk. Many animals are dying from the highly contagious disease, which affects cattle, buffaloes, sheep, goats, swine and other cloven-hoofed animals and spreads through body fluids that can contaminate clothing, crates, truck beds and hay.

To bring the situation under control, the mission recommended thorough surveillance to locate and map disease clusters; protecting unaffected farms through movement controls and bio-security measures; adequate sampling to correctly identify the virus strain or strains involved; and strategic use of the appropriate vaccines to contain and isolate disease clusters.

Source: United Nations