UN calls for increased funding to combat bird flu
The international community needs to spend at least €76.3m to combat bird flu – five times more than the “glaringly insufficient” amount provided last year, UN officials said today.
The call for funding came after international health experts at a bird flu conference said there is still time to avoid what is being called the world’s biggest health threat by stemming the virus at its source, ensuring that people and farm animals in Asia are sealed off from infected carriers.
“I see an alarming lack of commitment from donors and affected governments,” Dr Samuel Jutzi, an official with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, said at the three-day conference in Ho Chi Minh City. “I perceive a lack of political will in supporting efforts to reduce the risk.”
Countries last year gave only about €13.5m to fund an emergency response to the bird flu outbreak, he said. That amount, compared to the magnitude of the threat, is “glaringly insufficient,” Jutzi said.
Experts have warned that the H5N1 virus, which has ravaged the region’s poultry industry and killed 45 people across Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, could well become even deadlier if the virus mutates into a form that is easily transmitted between humans.
So far there is no evidence of that, but health and animal experts say the longer it remains in the environment, the greater the chances of the virus changing and triggering a global pandemic that could kill millions.
At a minimum, about €76.3m would be needed at the outset for beefing up veterinary services such as surveillance and monitoring the disease and providing animal vaccines, Jutzi said.
That would not include more long-term costs of poultry restocking, compensation for farmers, or restructuring farming practices, he said.
Though eradicating the virus no longer seems feasible in the short-term, controlling the virus to minimise infections from poultry to people is definitely possible, said Joseph Domenech, the FAO’s chief of animal health service.
“We have the tools today… With more investment, we can achieve good results in terms of controlling the effect of the disease,” he said.
Experts have acknowledged the biggest task lies in revamping husbandry practices of subsistence farmers, many of whom live in close, often unsanitary quarters with their livestock.
Other precautionary measures include penning up poultry in cages, separating chickens from ducks and other water fowl on farms and in markets, and keeping livestock out of homes.
Across Vietnam, which has been the hardest hit, about 80% to 90% of the 14 million households that raise poultry are small-scale farmers, who keep their chickens in the backyard instead of in cages, said Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat earlier in the conference.
Changing their habits will be a difficult challenge, Phat acknowledged, saying there is a realisation that the threat is “growing more and more”.
