Elisabeth Schreinemacher
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 4 2005 (IPS) – Nearly half a billion dollars is needed to choke off avian flu at its source, but just 30 million is currently available to fight the disease, according to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organisation.
Globalisation has brought home to us that today s health challenges respect no boundaries, said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, speaking at the Time Global Health Summit, a three-day event in New York. Governments everywhere have had to accept that every country is at risk.
And whatever we may know about the future course of H5N1 (avian influenza, or bird flu ), we do know this: once human-to-human transmission has been established, we would have only a matter of weeks to lock down the spread before it spins out of control, he warned.
We must be honest and admit to ourselves that merely stockpiling antiviral medicines does not constitute a strategy to fight avian flu.
On Thursday, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations hosted a special event in response to the current situation and the potential for a future pandemic.
Panelists focused on the international response to the virus, best practices, and how the U.N. system can support national capacities. ECOSOC President Munir Akram of Pakistan proposed quickly establishing a fund to help developing countries take preventive action and compensate farmers for the cost of killed poultry.
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If this not done, he warned, there is a possibility that farmers will not be very eager to report new cases.
The situation calls for collective action for more support for global public goods like investment and research in vaccines and for actions that would ensure that the entire world shares in the burden and costs of prevention, Akram said.
On Friday, China reported its fourth bird flu outbreak in less than a month. Authorities said that 8,940 chickens died in a northeastern village despite efforts to contain the virus. The discovery prompted authorities to destroy about 370,000 birds.
And health authorities in Japan say they plan to kill 180,000 chickens after finding antibodies in some for the H5 family of bird flu virus.
Participants at the ECOSOC event stressed that if a pandemic emerged, it could entail millions of deaths, grave economic losses and depletion of already weak health systems in developing regions, particularly Asia and Africa.
Many countries lack adequate scientific capacity to track and respond to new and reemerging diseases, and need both technical and financial assistance in creating preparedness plans.
The first human case of bird flu, linked to widespread poultry outbreaks in Vietnam and Thailand, was reported in January 2004. Health officials have warned that H5N1 could evolve into a global influenza pandemic if it mutates into a form that can spread easily between people.
In the present outbreak, there have been 121 reported human cases, of which 62 were fatal, all in Southeast Asia, but without human-to-human transmission. About 140 million domestic birds have died, or been killed to put a stop to the spread of the disease.
So far the virus is able to breach the barrier between poultry. But so far that virus has not been able to transfer itself from human to human, said David Heymann of the World Health Organisation. So that is why the window of opportunity is wide open to stop this virus in the chicken to decrease the number of possibilities for human-to-human transmission.
There is a risk, it s a true risk, but it can t be quantified, he added.
Louise Fresco, assistant director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, said that, Prioritisation and national action plans are important. Communicating to the public in a way that is as objective and simple as possible is very important because the tension in fact on trade and all economic affairs and diplomatic relations is very serious, as we have seen in the case of SARS.
According to David Nabarro, senior U.N. coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza, the international community is now facing substantial challenges, such as the improvement of animal health infrastructure to reduce the scale of the epidemic and new outbreaks, and contingency plans for pandemic response.
Nabarro suggested that governments should build stocks of essential medicines and urged for partnerships and networks that link the U.N. system to private groups.
The expectation is that resources will be available. It is just the question of establishing approaches to mobilising resources, and certainly they are needed very soon, he said.
