South Korea offers help to North over animal disease

South Korea has offered to send medical equipment to North Korea to help the country contain the outbreak of the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD).

Seoul made the offer on Monday after Pyongyang reported cases of the animal disease at a pig farm near the capital.

The North Korean Ministry of Agriculture said on February 22 that at least 3,200 pigs had been infected and that some had died of the disease but that most of them had been culled.

According to North Korea’s official KCNA news agency, the disease had spread to other areas in Pyongyang and a nearby county that led to the culling of thousands of pigs.

The KCNA also said that the impact of the outbreak of the highly contagious disease was worrying, citing shortages of medicine, diagnostic means and problems in access to disinfectants.

An official from South Korea’s Unification Ministry said, “In our proposal today, we called for talks on an emergency shipment of vaccines and medical equipment to North Korea.”

The official also said that there has been no response from North Korea to the offer yet.

South Korea sent experts, medicine and equipment to North in 2007 after an earlier outbreak of the livestock disease.

In 2011, the disease hit the entire Korean Peninsula, leading to the culling of more than three million animals in the South alone.

The FMD usually affects cloven-hoofed animals such as goats, sheep, pigs and cattle.