SE Asia needs $260 mln to fight bird flu - WHO
MANILA, Friday (Reuters) - The World Health Organisation (WHO) said
on Friday the international community needed to raise about $260 million
in the short term to fight the deadly bird flu virus in Southeast Asia.
"All attempts to bring it under control in Southeast Asia have
failed," Shigeru Omi, the WHO's director in the Western Pacific region,
told foreign correspondents based in Manila.
Health experts believe the H5N1 strain of the avian influenza virus,
which has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003, is moving
towards a form that could pass easily among humans.
Underlining the widening threat, European bird flu experts will hold
an emergency meeting on Friday, a day after health officials confirmed
H5N1 had spread from Asia to Turkey and said that Europe should prepare
for a pandemic.
European nations tightened border controls on poultry and poultry
products but fear the real threat could come from migratory birds
bringing the virus home.
South Korea issued a bird flu warning on Friday, saying migratory
birds passing through the Korean peninsula in coming months might spread
the disease and advised farmers to keep poultry indoors at farms.
Omi said H5N1, now transmitted to people only if they eat infected
birds or live in close contact with them, was "unpredictable and
unstable", raising the chance of it mutating into a form that could be
more virulent to humans.
Experts estimate that, if it acquires the ability to infect people
easily and spread efficiently, it will make more than 25 million people
seriously ill and kill as many as 7 million.
Omi called on all countries to report suspected bird flu cases as
soon as possible and share samples collected from infected poultry and
people with the international community.
"Without those samples, we cannot know if the virus is mutating and
if it is any closer to tipping the world into the unknown," he said.
The WHO said it would need $160 million to provide technical
assistance to affected countries, improve laboratory diagnosis and
surveillance and stockpile medicines such as Tamiflu.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) would need about
$100 million to deal with the disease on the animal front.
But Omi said the WHO hoped to generate more pledges from wealthier
states during meetings on bird flu in coming weeks in Canada, Australia
and Switzerland.
To date, about $20 million had been committed to help fight the
disease in Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos and Vietnam, where most of the
deaths caused by the H5N1 strain have been reported. |