KUALA LUMPUR : Malaysia Monday announced a new outbreak of the
deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu in a village in the northern state
of Penang.
The outbreak, the third in less than a week, was detected in six
dead birds in the village of Permatang Bagak, said Mustapa Jalil,
acting director-general of the Veterinary Services
Department.
"We have activated a rapid action team which will slaughter all the
birds in the area," he told AFP.
Most of the birds in the village are free-range chickens, he said,
adding that there were at least 200 of them.
The health department has also been alerted, he said.
The village is located in the north of mainland Penang, which
borders Perak state where the two earlier outbreaks were announced
Thursday.
Mainland Penang is just across a narrow channel from its popular
resort island.
The head of the Veterinary Department's disease control unit,
Kamaruddin Mat Isa, said officials did not know how the virus was
being spread, but said the latest outbreak was not linked to the
Perak outbreaks.
"I don't think it has come from Perak. It has not spread from Perak
to Penang," Kamaruddin told AFP, adding that officials Sunday had
completed the slaughter of more than 40,000 birds in Perak to
contain the disease.
"It's not spread from one location to the surrounding area, but
there are multiple locations," he said, confirming that officials
were worried over the development.
Kamaruddin said the slaughter of birds within a one-kilometre
radius of the Penang village was due to start late Monday.
The Health Ministry's director for disease control, Ramlee Rahmat,
said officials would start conducting door-to-door checks Tuesday
in the area around the latest outbreak to check for people with
symptoms of the virus.
"It is still localised in three different areas," he said of the
outbreaks.
No human cases of bird flu have been reported so far in
Malaysia.
Malaysia on Thursday announced the two outbreaks of the bird flu
virus at a village and a nature reserve near the Perak border with
Penang.
Perak has one of the country's biggest poultry industries.
Agriculture Minister Muhyiddin Yassin was quoted as saying by the
national Bernama news agency Monday that a poultry quarantine had
been imposed on Perak, and that all poultry was banned from leaving
the state.
H5N1 was detected last month in 40 free-range chickens in four
villages on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, the first outbreak in
the country in more than a year.
About 100 people have died from bird flu since 2003, most of them
in Asia. - AFP/ch
