July 11, 2006
UN officials say donations to bird flu fund have lagged
Donations to fight bird flu have lagged and need to pick up again in the face of a possible new upsurge in the disease as the winter months approach in the northern hemisphere, UN officials said Monday (Jul 10).
"The threats we're dealing with here are not science fiction. They're real," said UN bird flu chief David Nabarro.
Nabarro said the world must be prepared for the possible mutation in the H5N1 virus that would make it easy to pass from human to human, setting off an influenza pandemic that could prove devastating for humans.
But so far spending hasn't kept up with needs, he said.
"We're still in a situation where there are many countries that don't fully believe that a pandemic is going to happen," Nabarro said.
Of the US$1.9 billion pledged at a meeting in Beijing last January, more than half has advanced to the stage where the money is legally committed, Nabarro said. But only US$331 million has actually been handed over.
"It is our belief that the disbursement should be higher, given that we're talking here about a situation which has certain emergency features to it," he said.
David Harcharik, deputy director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, told a UN meeting that his agency, which combats the disease in poultry, has received less than one-third of the US$308 million it needs.
Harcharik said bird flu had been checked in poultry in Western Europe and much of South-east Asia apart from Indonesia, but that it is still expanding in Africa and will remain a threat for years to come, partly because of difficulties in culling infected birds and in paying compensation to farmers.
So far more than 209 million chickens and other poultry have died or been culled worldwide because of bird flu since Jan 2004, UN officials said. The economic impact has been especially severe on poor families which keep a small number of chickens. Harcharik said the economic loss had been US$10 billion in South-east Asia alone.
