Military Cautious About Helping Bird Flu-Hit Area
By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
The military decided to cut the number of troops deployed to help slaughter avian-influenza infected poultry after news broke that a soldier may have contracted the disease.
On Tuesday, according to the Defense Ministry, it had already reduced the number of troops from 200 to 100 in Gimje, North Jeolla Province.
Military authorities said the reduction reflects that the destroying work has almost finished, but observers speculate that it was the news about the soldier's suspected contraction of the influenza that moved them to back out.
On Monday, a day before the reduction plan, 22-year-old Cho, who had been working in Sunchang, North Jeolla Province, displayed high fever and other symptoms similar to the disease after having helped bury infected chickens.
The Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs swiftly explained that it could be simple pneumonia and that it would take up to three weeks to identify the disease, but there was still concern the disease could quickly become human-infectious.
``We believe the corporal is unlikely to have contracted avian influenza, but we are taking every precaution with other troops,'' a military official told Yonhap.
It was earlier reported that the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries requested the military authorities deploy troops to help destroy the birds, adding up to a million chickens and thousands of ducks. However, the defense ministry was reluctant to do so, fearing families of the dispatched would claim the possibility of human infection of the disease.
Earlier, renowned doctor Kim Woo-ju of Korea University Medical Center had warned that the avian influenza was spreading in an unusual pattern and added his concern the disease could turn into a human -infectious one.
On Tuesday, two more suspected cases of bird flu were reported in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, with more than 2,500 and 450 chickens dead, respectively. As of Tuesday, of 49 reported cases of suspected avian influenza outbreak, 26 have been confirmed to be highly pathogenic.