Nations haggle over birdflu funding

BEIJING - Rich donor nations meeting in Beijing started haggling today over how best to raise US$1.4 billion ($2 billion) to fight bird flu as new cases were reported in children in Indonesia and Turkey.

The European Union raised its pledge for the fund by US$20 million to US$120 million, but details on other contributions were still scarce.

As if to underscore the need, Indonesia's health ministry said a three-year-old boy who died today was being tested for H5N1 avian influenza. His 13-year-old sister died a few days ago and initial tests showed she had the H5N1 virus.

Turkey said it was treating another child for bird flu, the 21st human case there since the start of the month. The outbreak in Turkey has brought the disease to the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Roche AG, maker of the front-line influenza drug Tamiflu, said it had donated two million more treatment courses of the drug to the World Health Organisation (WHO) to use to try and control outbreaks.

"It is meant as a fire blanket to contain damage if we receive signals and evidence from the ground that we are moving into the beginning of a pandemic," Dr Margaret Chan, the WHO's senior influenza coordinator, told reporters at the conference in Beijing.

This is in addition to three million courses, or 30 million capsules, that Roche donated last year.

Turkish and WHO officials say they have had good luck in quickly treating suspected bird flu victims with Tamiflu, although some patients in Vietnam have died despite the use of the drug and have shown evidence that the virus has already begun to evolve resistance there.

The only other licensed drug shown to work against H5N1 influenza is Relenza, made by GlaxoSmithKline, but a small US company, BioCryst Pharmaceuticals Inc, said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had granted fast-track status for its experimental influenza drug peramivir.

Last month, the FDA gave its approval to begin human testing of intravenous peramivir.

The drugs do not cure infection but may help keep it mild. So far, H5N1 has killed just under half of 150 or so people it has infected, but the mortality rate in Turkey appears to be lower for reasons that are poorly understood.

The latest Turkish case is an infected child in Dogubayazit, close to the Iranian border, where four Turkish children have been killed by the virus.

Experts fear the virus will spread further unless money is provided to improve veterinary services and animal surveillance. And the more it spreads, the greater the opportunity for chickens to infect people.

"It is going more and more toward the western part of the world," UN Food and Agriculture Organisation Chief Veterinary Officer Joseph Domenech said.

The big fear is that the virus will mutate just enough to easily spread from person to person, sparking a pandemic that could kill millions.

"There is a significant shortfall of funds in many affected countries ... which will seriously hamper their prevention and control efforts," Qiao Zonghuai, Chinese vice foreign minister, told the Beijing conference, sponsored jointly by the Chinese government, the European Commission and the World Bank.

The World Bank estimates that between US$1.2 billion and US$1.4 billion will be needed to prepare for and respond to outbreaks. The bank has estimated that a bird flu pandemic lasting a year could cost the global economy up to US$800 billion.

The US Insurance Information Institute estimated that it could cost the US life insurance industry US$133 billion in extra death claims in a pandemic that killed 1.9 million Americans.

Chan, the WHO's top pandemic expert, said it would be cheaper to pay now to prevent a pandemic than to suffer the costs later.

"My argument is, whatever resources you put in place, compared to the possible economic loss in the event of a pandemic, is peanuts," she told reporters at the conference, attended by delegates from 89 countries and more than 20 international organisations.

Turkish authorities have culled around a million birds over the past two weeks to try to contain the outbreak there. The Agriculture Ministry has imposed a nationwide ban on the transit of poultry.

Turkish Health Minister Recep Akdag rejected criticism that the government failed to react quickly enough to the outbreak, which first hit poultry in western Turkey in October.

"If the country was not prepared for this epidemic the health system would have collapsed," he told parliament.

- REUTERS