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Funds
promised to fight bird flu, new deaths probed By Ben Blanchard The Star, 19 Jan 2006 |
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BEIJING (Reuters) - Wealthy nations promised $1.9 billion on Wednesday for a global fund to combat bird flu, while China reported another death from the virus and Iraq tested a dead teenage girl who may also be a victim. The funding promised at the end of an international conference in Beijing was well in excess of an initial target set by the World Bank to raise at least $1.2 billion.
Conference host China said a 35-year-old woman in the southwest of the country had died of bird flu. The woman, a poultry slaughterer, would be China's sixth human death from the virus if confirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO) The World Bank has estimated that a pandemic lasting a year could cost the global economy up to $800 billion. Across the globe, millions could die if the H5N1 avian flu virus mutates just enough to pass easily among people. "This is not charity. This is not just solidarity. This is self-defense," EU Health Commissioner Markos Kyprianou told a news conference in Beijing. Of the $1.9 billion pledged, about $900 million would be in the form of loans, and the rest in grants, he added. The H5N1 virus has killed at least 79 |
people in six countries since late 2003, according to the most recent figures from the World Health Organization. The victims normally contract the virus through close contact with infected birds. Turkey is the latest country to confirm an outbreak among people, reporting 21 cases including the deaths of four children in the east of the country this month. That development marked the progress of the virus from East Asia to the gates of Europe and the Middle East. Iraq was testing for a human case of the virus for the first time on Wednesday after a 14-year-old girl died of a fever in the Kurdish region close to the Turkish and Iranian borders. Health officials said Tijan Abdel-Qader, who died on Tuesday after a two-week illness, lived close to a lake that is a haven for migratory birds flying south from Turkey. FUNDING PLEDGES Europe's consumers are shunning poultry over fears of bird flu, with sales particularly badly hit in countries close to Turkey. Turkey also fears the outbreak could scare away visitors and damage its valuable tourist trade. The virus is endemic in poultry in large parts of Asia, often hitting countries which are poorly equipped to detect and eradicate it. Money pledged at the conference in Beijing is intended to fill in some of the gaps. The United States pledged about $334 million, saying the money would be mainly in the form of grants and technical assistance. The total EU pledge is nearly $250 million. |
"The amount asked for is small compared to the cost of a pandemic we are not ready for," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told the conference in a video address. World Bank Vice President Jim Adams said there was recognition that if dealt with promptly, bird flu could be managed. Of the total pledged, he said between $100 million and $200 million would go into a trust fund to be managed by the World Bank. Some of the rest would be managed bilaterally -- between donors and targets of their choice. He said more than half the $1.9 billion was new commitments, not mentioned in previous aid programmes. PLEDGES WELCOMED Analysts said the Beijing conference had been very useful but stressed the need to turn pledges into action. "If we are lucky and the pandemic doesn't hit us for the next six months, I think the world would be reasonably well prepared to cope," said Michael Richardson, senior research fellow of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, who wrote a report on the threat of a global pandemic. "It's a good start. Once this money is spent, the question is how quickly can the necessary people be trained -- the health workers, the veterinarians, the animal health people on the ground -- how quickly the clinics and the facilities can be put in place," he added. (Additional reporting by Mia Shanley in Singapore and Twana Osman in Sulaimaniya, Iraq) |
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