EU: Focus on animal health, not drug stockpile
The Star, 15 Jan 2006

TOKYO: The international effort to help poor Asian countries respond to the threat of a pandemic triggered by bird flu should focus more on animal health rather than on stockpiling drugs for humans, a senior European Union official said, as Indonesia’s death toll from the disease rose to 12.

Donors at the meeting on Friday aimed at upgrading countries’ preparedness to contain a possible outbreak of a pandemic strain of flu said they were ready to pump millions of dollars into the effort, but differed over how it should be spent.

Experts believe the H5N1 strain of bird flu    could   trigger   a   pandemic    if   it

mutates into a form easily passed from person to person.

Many governments have been stockpiling the antiviral drug Tamiflu.

But Patrick Deboyser, the EU delegate attending the two-day meeting here, said it was preferable to fight bird flu at its source --- in animals, and in the Asian countries where serious outbreaks have already occurred.

“This animal disease is really affecting everyone who lives in these countries”, said Deboyser. “I didn’t say --- and it is not our view --- that stockpiling doesn’t make sense, but our priority is somewhere else for the moment”.

The EU would not fund efforts to stockpile antiviral drugs in the region, he said. Instead the EU wants its money to be spent on improving veterinary services, including detection and laboratory facilities.

On Friday, Indonesia’s death toll from bird flu rose to 12 after tests on a 29-year-old woman who died earlier this week came back positive, said World Health Organization spokesman Sari Setiogi.

The agency was still awaiting results for a 39-year-old man who died recently, she said, but local tests indicated he, too, had the deadly H5N1 virus. --- AP.