UN: Global bird flu campaign needs $1.5 b

UNITED NATIONS, Thursday (Reuters) International donors will need to contribute about $1.4 billion to finance the next phase of the global campaign against bird flu at a conference next week in Beijing, a top U.N. official said on Wednesday.

Dr. David Nabarro, senior coordinator for avian influenza at the United Nations, said he was optimistic delegates to the Jan. 17-18 meeting in China would pledge the full amount.

But this was just "the beginning," he said, stressing that future phases of the campaign would be far more costly.

The money would help national governments and international organizations put measures in place to try to stem the spread of the disease in birds and prevent cases in humans, he said.

In the meantime, there was no need for people to stop eating chicken, as the vast majority of the world's poultry stocks were "perfectly safe," he said.

Nabarro spoke with reporters after the H5N1 strain of avian influenza surfaced in wild birds and poultry in a third of the provinces of Turkey, killing at least two children and infecting more than a dozen people in little more than a week.

The Turkish victims were the first human cases reported outside east Asia since H5N1 reemerged in 2003.

Scientists fear the virus, which is known to have killed 78 people, could mutate into a form able to spread easily among humans, leading to a pandemic. Health officials believe all the human deaths so far have spread through contact with sick birds rather than from human to human.

In the meantime, the international authorities are doing all they can to contain the spread of the disease among the bird population, he said.

He called on governments to gear up their veterinary services, to ensure teams are in place to quickly get to and isolate any sick birds.

It was also important for governments to prepare laboratories now for quick analysis of any suspect animals, and educate the public on the need to steer clear if birds start dying.

Meanwhile a top World Health Organisation (WHO) official said The threat of a bird flu pandemic was growing daily, but a pandemic was not inevitable if countries and health bodies could respond quickly enough.

Fears have been growing about the H5N1 avian flu virus spreading to more countries after a spate of infections in Turkey, the first cases in humans outside East Asia."As the new cases of human infection with the H5N1 virus in Turkey show, the situation is worsening with each passing month and the threat of an influenza pandemic is continuing to grow every day," Shigeru Omi, WHO's regional director for the Western Pacific, said.He was addressing a gathering of Asian countries and international organisations holding two days of talks in Tokyo. The talks began on Thursday.

"We must try to ensure that we will be ready to respond instantly with all the weapons at our disposal should the early signs of an influenza pandemic appear," Omi said, noting that Asia was still the epicentre of the threat to global health.

"If we can achieve this rapid response, we may have a good chance of halting the spread of the virus before the situation becomes uncontrollable, or at least of slowing it down. But if we fail, the consequences for societies, economies and global public health could be immeasurable," he added.

Scientists say the H5N1 virus remains relatively hard for people to catch and is spread almost exclusively through contact with birds, but there are fears it could mutate into a pandemic form which could kill millions of people.

Omi told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that among steps likely to be discussed at the conference were ways to raise public awareness and to strengthen surveillance.