March 3, 2004

 

 

Asian Officials Cooperate In Bird Flu Fight

 

Officials from China and Asean have held a meeting to discuss joint strategy against bird flu. Despite optimism that the current outbreak has been contained, calls for closer cooperation and renewed vigilance were made.

 

The officials at the one-day meeting of China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian nations called for sharing more research and information on local outbreaks.

 

"We cannot just stop here, because the disease will be mutating,'' said Thai Deputy Prime Minister Suwit Khunkitti.

 

"I think I can say it's contained. But with this kind of disease, we have to be keeping up with new developments all the time.''

 

China organized the conference as a follow-up to an emergency meeting in January in Bangkok where Asian officials pledged to set up a regional laboratory network and step up surveillance.

 

It came a day after officials in Japan confirmed that an outbreak that killed hundreds of thousands of chickens was caused by the same strain that has killed 22 people in Vietnam and Thailand.

 

Regionwide, governments have slaughtered 100 million chickens, ducks and other poultry in efforts to control the virus.

 

"Asian countries are presently facing a very huge crisis,'' said Cambodia's agriculture secretary of state, Chan Tong Yves.

 

He said the scale of the threat to human health and economies hurt by damage to the poultry industry "requires broad collaboration and strong political willingness.''

 

Suwit, the Thai official, said he expected a planned joint statement by the ministers to call for creation of a "network of information'' among regional health officials.

 

China and ASEAN created a similar warning network last year during the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome to alert each other to possible cases among travelers.

 

"What we learned so much from SARS is that a disease in one country is a threat to another,'' said Henk Bekedam, the World Health Organization representative in Beijing.

 

"If one country is successful, but the other is not, it still poses a threat that it will reoccur.''