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TAGAYTAY, Philippines: Southeast Asia on Friday agreed to boost regional efforts to combat the deadly bird flu virus as the United Nations warned an expected human avian flu pandemic could kill up to 150 million people.
The world body also named a special coordinator to lead a global strategy to contain a possible pandemic.
UN chief Kofi Annan on Thursday appointed David Nabarro, a Briton who is one of the leading World Health Organization's (WHO) public health experts, as senior UN coordinator for avian and human influenza.
"Let's say the range of (human) deaths could be anything between five and 150 million. I believe the work we are doing over the next few months on prevention and preparedness will make the difference between for example whether the next pandemic leads us in the direction of 150 (million) or in the direction of five," Nabarro said.
"We expect the next (human) influenza pandemic to come at any time now. It is likely to be caused by a mutant of the virus that is currently causing bird flu in Asia," Nabarro told reporters as he outlined a three-pronged strategy to deal with the threat.
"The avian flu epidemic has to be controlled if we are to prevent a human influenza pandemic," he warned, saying this would be a key goal for his office.
He said the UN would need to work with governments, firms involved in chicken farming and communities who are close to chickens, particularly in Asia where birds are often very domesticated, to try to increase the separation between humans and birds.
He added that attention would also have to be paid to the migration of wild birds around the world, since the bird flu virus had been found in migrating geese, ducks and other wild fowl.
ASEAN ministers on Friday agreed to boost regional efforts to combat the deadly bird flu virus and stop it from becoming a global health disaster.
"This is no longer just an agriculture issue, but a public health issue," Singaporean Minister for National Development Mah Bow Tan told a news conference at the close of the 27th meeting of ASEAN Ministers of Agriculture and Forestry held in the resort city of Tagaytay, south of the Philippine capital.
In a joint statement after their meetings, the ministers endorsed an action plan spearheaded by a Malaysian-led task force to prevent the spread of the disease.
The framework covers "eight strategic areas over a period of three years from 2006 to 2008 to prevent, control and eradicate the disease", the ministers said in the joint statement.
The task force was also directed to "formulate detailed action plans for implementation" and identify sources of funding.
Regional officials led by the task force will also work closely with UN bodies such as the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Office to combat the problem.
"The ministers expressed confidence that with financial and political commitment, the disease can be effectively controlled in the region," the statement said.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Nabarro stressed the crucial importance of preparedness "so if there is a species jump, if the virus moves and mutates from the bird population to the human population, we are ready to respond, to neutralize it, to contain it and to delay the development of a major flu pandemic."
"Most scientists reckon that there will be a very short interval between the discovery of the mutant virus that causes the next influenza pandemic and the time when that pandemic really starts to get out of control. It will be a matter of weeks," Nabarro said. "The window of opportunity to delay a pandemic is short."
He added that WHO, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health were working as a triangle, with backing from the World Bank and other UN agencies, to help countries deal with the looming threat.
The next phase, he added, would be detecting the unusual transmission of the virus with good epidemiology, good surveillance networks for human illness.
The virus would then have to be contained in affected populations through a mix of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu and vaccination with the most potent vaccines available, Nabarro said.
Tamiflu can alleviate some symptoms and slow down the spread of the flu, but does not constitute a cure. And it is not known whether those who take the drug continue to be carriers of the virus.
Another challenge, Nabarro noted, was "how to organize the world's vaccine manufacturing capacity so that it can respond once we know the precise makeup of virus that causes the pandemic."
"We've also got to get the message to everybody so that we get a response that has the right level of concern without leading to unreasonable panic," he said.
The H5N1 variant of the disease has been known to scientists for decades as a latent killer within the world's bird populations.
However, it became a global concern when in Hong Kong in 1997 the strain first mutated into a form lethal to humans, killing six people.
Since late 2003, large outbreaks of the disease have exploded among poultry flocks throughout Asia, leading to more than 60 human deaths. Millions of chickens and ducks were culled in efforts to halt the disease's spread.
Monday, FAO warned the global strategy for controlling bird flu in poultry remained under-funded despite important contributions pledged by some donors.
A global strategy for control programme in Southeast Asian countries was launched in May by the FAO and the World Organisation for Animal Health in collaboration with WHO. The agencies in May called for pledges of more than 100 million dollars over the next three years.
To date, donors have pledged around 16.5 million, including six million each from Germany and the United States, four million from Switzerland and half a million from Japan.
- AFP/ir
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