YANGON, MYANMAR: Myanmar has reported an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus at a chicken farm in the northeast, state media and an international livestock health agency said Saturday (24 Nov).

Unusual deaths of chickens at a farm in a village in Shan State's Keng Tung township were reported on 18 Nov, and laboratory tests confirmed that H5N1 was detected in some of them, the state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.

According to the Myanmar government's report to the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health, 2,058 of the farm's 2,591 susceptible birds had died in the outbreak, and the other 533 were slaughtered to prevent the virus from spreading.

Authorities imposed other control measures including a quarantine on the farm, limits on movement of poultry in the area, and disinfection of affected premises, it said.

H5N1 began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003, leading to the death or slaughter of millions of birds. The virus has also killed at least 206 people worldwide. Myanmar has reported no human H5N1 cases.

Experts believe most human victims of the virus were infected through direct contact with sick birds. Although bird flu is difficult for humans to catch, experts fear it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people and spark a flu pandemic.

Myanmar last reported an H5N1 outbreak in October in poultry farms in eastern Bago, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the nation's largest city, Yangon. H5N1 was also found in some farms in Yangon in February and March, and in Mon State and western Bago in July, the New Light Of Myanmar reported. (AP)