Avian influenza - more
- From: " Jill." <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 13:03:44 +0100
just one of many reports I am collecting at
http://poultryreports.blogspot.com/
Flu battle suffers shortage of money
By Keith Bradsher
The New York Times
HONG KONG -- As the Bush administration and Congress prepare to spend
billions of dollars to improve America's ability to combat avian flu,
crucial needs are being left unmet on the front lines of the world's
defenses against the disease, in some cases for lack of a few million
dollars, international health officials said Saturday.
When Vietnam began detecting the disease in chickens nearly two years ago,
it slaughtered and burned every chicken within three miles of an infected
fowl in an effort to prevent the spread of the disease. But farmers, who
received little compensation for slaughtered birds, strongly objected and
sometimes sold their birds instead at roadside markets to unsuspecting
drivers.
Yielding to popular pressure, the government has steadily shrunk the culling
radius. Officials now kill only those birds in an infected household flock
that do not die of the disease.
In Indonesia, a lack of money to compensate farmers for culled chickens
prompted the government to announce last year a less expensive policy of
vaccinating chickens. One risk of such a strategy is that the virus will
adapt and infect even unvaccinated chickens without causing symptoms of
illness.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has been trying since February to
raise $100 million from donor nations to pay for veterinary services and
diagnostic equipment to assess and slow the spread of avian flu in chickens
and other fowl.
But so far, the organization has raised barely $30 million, leaving many
veterinary needs unmet.
Eradication of the disease in birds is already impossible, said Diderik De
Vleeschauwer, the FAO's spokesman in Bangkok, because it has become so
widespread in Southeast Asia. But containing the spread of the disease could
reduce the opportunities for the virus to acquire the ability to pass easily
from person to person.
More preparations have been made in Asia to respond to human cases of avian
influenza, as opposed to cases of the disease in birds, especially in the
past year.
Japan has begun manufacturing its own Tamiflu, a costly antiviral medicine.
Hong Kong is assembling a database of private doctors willing to do
volunteer work in government hospitals in the event of an epidemic.
But while every government in East Asia and the western Pacific now has some
kind of a plan, at least in the draft stages, more work needs to be done,
said Dr. Richard Brown, an epidemiologist with the World Health
Organization. Many of the gaps lie in differences in incomes among Asian
countries.
Very poor countries like Cambodia and Laos still struggle to provide even
the most basic health care to people outside their biggest cities. Health
officials worry that if the bird flu virus were to start spreading in either
country, it could become entrenched and out of control before the
international health community even became aware of it, quickly spreading.
--
regards
Jill Bowis
Pure bred utility chickens and ducks
Housing; Equipment, Books, Videos, Gifts
Herbaceous; Herb and Alpine nursery
Working Holidays in Scotland
http://www.kintaline.co.uk
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