Getting funds for war on bird flu
NST, 16 Jan 2006

BEIJING, Sun. --- Officials from half the nations on the planet will meet in Beijing on Tuesday and Wednesday to raise the US$1.5 billion (RM5.6 billion) needed to tackle the potential global catastrophe of a bird flu pandemic.

“A global threat needs a global response. That is why it is important to mobilize co-operation”, European Union external affairs commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said on Friday.

“It is better to spend now on controlling avian influenza at the source and helping to prevent a new human influenza pandemic than to have to spend much more in the catastrophic event of a human pandemic”.

Such calls for international collaboration in the face of the bird flu threat have multiplied in the run-up to this week’s donors’ conference, a joint initiative by China, the World Bank and the EU.

The deaths of three children in Turkey this month --- the first victims outside Southeast Asia and China --- and several outbreaks in farms in the east of the country have stoked fears the virus is spreading.

Scientists fear the more the virus spreads, the greater the chance H5N1 will mutate into a form that is easily transmissible between humans and spark a global pandemic that could claim millions of lives.

There is a real possibility that further mutation of the virus strain might result in sustained human-to-human transmission and a human influenza pandemic” which could kill “millions of people”, says a draft declaration to be submitted to the 90 countries and 25 organizations represented in Beijing.

The World Bank has estimated that the potential economic and financial cost of a pandemic could reach US$800 billion and that two percentage points would be knocked off world economic growth.

First appearing in Southeast Asia in 2003, the H5N1 strain of bird flu --- carried by migratory birds --- spread to the Middle East and then to Europe. --- AFP.