| ■ Japan Confirms 4th Bird Flu Outbreak This Year | 07.02.05 |
| Japanese officials said Thursday they've confirmed the country's fourth outbreak of bird flu in poultry this year. Tests are still being conducted to determine if it's the deadly H5N1 virus or a less dangerous H5N2 virus. In this latest outbreak, more than 80 chickens died at a poultry farm in the town of Shintomicho in Miyazaki prefecture on the southern island of Kyushu. In response, officials ordered the slaughter of 93,000 chickens, Agence France Presse reported. In January, there were two cases of H5N1 in Miyazaki prefecture and another outbreak of bird flu in Okayama prefecture on the island of Honshu. In related news, officials have been conducting door-to-door checks in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta to enforce a ban on domestic poultry. The ban is meant to help fight bird flu, which has killed six people in the country so far this year and 63 people since June 2005, AFP reported. As of Thursday, more than 100,000 birds collected from the capital had been slaughtered, but it's estimated there are more than one million birds still in Jakarta, officials said. |