WHO meet puts funds required to tackle bird flu at $1.5 billion

WHO meet puts funds required to tackle bird flu at $1.5 billion

	Published : Fri, 11 Nov 2005 01:35 By : Andrew Stead Print this Story

GENEVA: Experts at a WHO-sponsored meeting on the avian influenza estimate that as much as $1.5 billion will be required in the next few years to control the disease among poultry and to prevent a pandemic among humans.

Representatives from over 100 countries, who participated, felt $500 million will be required urgently to fight the H5N1 influenza strain in poultry and this is the best way to stop the strain from mutating into a more dangerous one that can infect humans.

Almost same amounts would have to be earmarked for surveillance and treatment mechanisms to counter human infections of the disease and for creating sufficient stock of drugs and carrying out research into developing a human vaccine.

Researchers said one thrust area should in limiting the contact between humans and the poultry susceptible to infection. So far, bird flu has been identified in 125 people, killing 64 of them. Almost all those infected humans were in contact with infected birds.

In Vietnam, where the infection has been raging, raising poultry in the open has been banned in the districts of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Sale of live birds in open markets and killing them and plucking them in the open have also been banned. A Vietnamese representative at the conference, vice minister of agriculture and rural development Bui Ba Bong, said some 80 million birds have been vaccinated against the virus. The country had 92 human infections and 42 deaths and it is conducting experiments to develop a human vaccine.

Drug firms Chiron Corp., GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur are also testing and producing H5N1 vaccine, while pharma companies in Australia, Hungary and China and a consortium of Japanese manufacturers are also making the vaccine.

Two companies, Baxter and Solvay, are developing vaccines using cell cultures, instead of growing the virus in hundreds of thousands of fertile chicken eggs to create vaccines.

The U.S. government, in the meanwhile, has come out with a $7.1 billion preparedness plan to stop the virus from infecting humans. This includes $251 million to be spent in foreign countries, especially in Southeast Asia.

Addressing a winding-up session of the three-day conference, WHO chief Lee Jong-Wook said the strategy is to minimise the virus threat at source in animals and humans, strengthening early warning systems, strengthening veterinary services, improving pandemic preparedness, making access to anti-viral drugs fairer and more research into pandemic vaccines.

The World Bank estimated that an amount in the range of $750 million to $ 1 billion will be required to fight the virus and prepare the world for a possible flu pandemic. The figure does not include stocking antiviral drugs and development and distribution of human flu vaccines.

The World Bank has also come out with a financing framework with focus on "country-owned programmes". The plan covers both grants and interest-free loans to countries. It is also setting up a trust to receive donations.

A World Bank official, Klaus Rohland, has proposed that poultry breeders should be paid about three-quarters of the market value of their chickens to create effective culling programmes to curb the bird flu. His suggestion is based on an experiment in Vietnam. He said paying compensation of about 75 per cent was the best strategy to avoid the risk of "double moral hazard".

Delegates at the WHO meeting were of the opinion that the meeting could create an awareness about the possible threat dimensions of the pandemic.