February 24, 2005

 

 

Bird flu meet to hear findings from China, Thailand and Vietnam

 

International experts meeting in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's southern city, went behing closed doors to discuss ways of combating bird flu after hearing dire warnings that it could linger for years and even lead to a pandemic.

 

The Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese delegations to a conference here on the disease were scheduled to present their experiences and findings in fighting bird flu, which has killed 33 people in Vietnam alone.

 

The conference, which opened on Wednesday, has drawn delegations from more than 20 countries and organisations, including major donors and United Nations agencies.

 

It is the second such meeting since the outbreak of bird flu in late 2003.

 

Delegates want to understand why some countries have been more affected than others. While Vietnam has been hard hit, China, with its huge populations of both humans and poultry, has reported hardly any cases this year.

 

The director of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Western Pacific office, Shigeru Omi, told the conference Wednesday that bird flu would have a greater impact than the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak that killed nearly 800 people two years ago.

 

"We at WHO believe that the world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic," Omi said.

 

"The health impact in term of death and sickness will be enormous and certainly much greater that SARS," he said.

 

Bird flu has been discovered in eight countries since late 2003 -- Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos and South Korea.

 

Thirty-three people have died in Vietnam since then in several outbreaks. Another 12 have died in Thailand.

 

The conference has also heard that virus would take years to eradicate.

 

"Immediate eradication of the disease in the region cannot be envisaged in the short term under the current situation," Teruhide Fujita, from the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), said Wednesday.

 

The second day of the conference was expected to focus on scientific advances made against the disease, as well as socio-economic analysis of its impact and rehabilitation measures and public health issues.

 

Collaboration between international organisations on helping prevent the disease would also top the agenda.

 

In the afternoon, delegates were to go into separate working group sessions on diagnosis, surveillance, prevention and control, and economic and policy issues.

 

International standards and human health implications of the disease would also be a major focus, according to the program.