# 5310
Late this week North Korea officially notified the OIE of a spate of recent FMD (Food and Mouth Disease) outbreaks in their nation going back to December of 2010.
Given the large number of outbreaks in neighboring South Korea over the past few months, and unofficial intelligence reports (see Reports: FMD Suspected In North Korea) beginning nearly a month ago, this notification wasn’t completely unexpected.
Foot-and-mouth (FMD) disease is a severe, highly contagious viral disease of cattle and swine. It also affects sheep, goats, deer, and other cloven-hooved ruminants. FMD is not a threat to people and no human health risks are associated with the disease. FMD is caused by a virus. Signs of illness can appear after an incubation period of 1 to 8 days, but often develop within 3 days. There are seven known types and more than 60 subtypes of the FMD virus.
FMD (not to be confused with HFMD – a usually mild viral illness common to children) is endemic in many parts of the world (Africa, Asia, South America, some parts of Europe), but has been eradicated in many others.
The full OIE report is available available here.
It details 48 recent outbreaks involving 500 cattle, nearly 10,000 swine, and 165 goats. The culling of livestock (if ordered) was not mentioned in this report.
According to this initial notification, a locally produced vaccine was employed, but it `was not effective to control the disease’. The source of these outbreaks was listed as unknown or inconclusive.
The following map shows the first 48 outbreaks.
Under Epidemiological comments, this report indicates that this initial notification is incomplete, that additional outbreaks have been detected, and that further details are expected.
This immediate notification report has been prepared and published by the Animal Health Information Department in the meantime and outbreaks are gathered by clusters of outbreaks and by affected district. This is only an approximation of their location.
When the exact data on the location of each outbreak will be provided by the National Veterinary Authorities, this report will be amended to reflect more precise locations of the outbreaks and the disease distribution. Not all the outbreaks are processed since approximate geographic locations have not been found.
There are additional outbreaks notified in January that are not yet processed and that will be processed as soon as the completed information is received from the country.
South Korea meanwhile continues to struggle with their own outbreaks of FMD, with their latest OIE report showing 148 outbreaks since November of 2010.
Both Japan and South Korea detected FMD in the spring of 2010, and after the destruction of 290,000 head of livestock, Japan declared their FMD crisis over in August.
South Korea, however, continues to find infected livestock and has destroyed millions of head of their combined swine & cattle herds in an effort to contain the virus.
