Tokyo/Kampala: At least 80,000 chickens were culled at a poultry farm in central Japan's Gifu subdivision, where the highly pathogenic H5 bird flu strain had been detected, local authorities said.
Over 100 chickens were found dead at the farm in Yamagata city in the prefecture. Among seven of those carcasses sent for a preliminary test, six tested positive for bird flu, authorities said on Sunday.
The local government started culling the chickens at the farm Saturday night following the H5 virus was confirmed in further tests, Xinhua news agency reported.
Local authorities have ordered farms within 10 km of the affected poultry farms to stop transporting eggs and poultry out of the areas, while checking whether the virus has spread to neighbouring farms.
Bird flu cases have been reported at farms in Japan's central Niigata subdivision, southwestern Miyazaki prefecture, northeastern Aomori prefecture and Hokkaido since November last year.
Meanwhile, bird flu has also broken out in the central part of Uganda, a senior ministry of agriculture official said.
Connie Acayo, the spokesperson of the ministry, told Xinhua news agency by telephone on Saturday that confirmatory test of dead birds on Lutembe beach on the shores of Lake Victoria and in Masaka district showed that the disease had broken out.
The spokesperson added that government is going to issue precautionary measures to prevent the disease from spreading further.
Uganda is among the countries in sub-Saharan Africa that face a high risk of a bird flu outbreak because it is crisscrossed by several routes for migratory birds, which are carriers of the virus.
Bird flu or avian influenza is an infectious disease of birds caused by type A strains of the influenza virus, according to World Health Organisation.
According to the global health body, avian influenza viruses do not normally infect humans but there have been instances of certain highly pathogenic strains causing severe respiratory disease in humans.
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