South Korea plans to establish about 23 teams to conduct year-round monitoring for bird flu, the agriculture ministry said Tuesday. The decision comes after the country experienced its worst bird flu outbreak, which led to the slaughter of more than 8 million domestic birds.

As part of the new program, migratory and resident wild birds will be monitored regularly and all chicken and duck farms will be inspected every other week for strains of bird flu, Agence France-Presse reported.

A new warning has come about the deadly strain of avian flu that has caused the destruction of hundreds of millions of poultry around the world, especially in Asia.

But this time, the Associated Press reports, the threat is not so much whether the H5N1 strain will mutate into a virus that could infect millions of humans, but whether the destruction it has already caused will create a food shortage.

By Amanda Gardner
EmpowHer's HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, June 11 (HealthDay News) -- Scientists have succeeded in developing a whole-virus bird flu vaccine that appears to be safe, more effective than the one currently approved for human use and also able to be manufactured much more quickly than conventional vaccines.

Three-quarters of volunteers produced antibodies against the virus after receiving a second dose of the vaccine, CELVAPAN, made by Baxter, compared with only 45 percent in the currently approved vaccine.

No single drug alone would be adequate to treat all people who would become infected during a worldwide flu pandemic, and nations need to stockpile more than one type of drug, say scientists at the National Institute for Medical Research in Great Britain.

They analyzed samples of H5N1 bird flu that had infected humans and found a mutation that made it resistant to the anti-viral drug Tamiflu. However, the mutation didn't protect the virus from another drug called Relenza, BBC News reported.

The study appears in the journal Nature.

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 27 (HealthDay News) -- Several strains of H5N1 bird flu virus that afflicted southern China were blocked from entering neighboring Thailand and Vietnam, say University of California, Irvine, researchers who conducted the first-ever statistical analysis of H5N1's genetic diversity.

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

UK Plans to Vaccinate Entire Population if Bird Flu Pandemic Occurs

Although there hasn't been a single confirmed case of human-to-human infection, the possibility of an avian flu pandemic has prompted the British government to announce it intends to provide its entire population with vaccinations if such an outbreak should occur.