Thousands of chickens and quails have been culled in Monywa in response to an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu, according to Reuters on February 26.
Myanmar’s first outbreak of H5N1 was in this same region, about 525 miles northwest of Yangon, in 2006 and the last outbreak was in Rakhine State in 2011. The disease was brought under control and was not known to have spread to humans.
H5N1, which first infected humans in 1997 in Hong Kong, has since spread from Asia to Europe and Africa.