Poor farmers weak link in bird flu fight

NOUMEA - Reluctance by poor Asian poultry farmers to report bird flu outbreaks is a weak link in the fight to prevent the deadly disease spreading and causing a human pandemic, the World Health Organisation said yesterday.

"We need to realise that there is very little incentive for farmers to report suspected outbreaks," said Dr Shigeru Omi, the organisation's regional director for the Western Pacific, which covers 37 Asian and Pacific nations.

"Fear that their flocks might be culled without compensation is a pretty strong disincentive to report an outbreak," said Omi at the opening of the UN agency's western Pacific conference in Noumea.

The conference of health ministers and officials from the 37 nations hopes to adopt an Asia-Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases, to fight not only avian flu but other existing and yet to emerge diseases. The plan aims to strengthen reporting of outbreaks, ensure rapid responses and increase international co-operation.

"We must keep in mind that we are likely to encounter in the coming years many other new emerging diseases," said Omi.

Asian Governments were trying their best to combat avian flu, but there was no proper surveillance in rural villages, and a lack of education was leaving farmers and market operators at risk.

Recalling his personal experiences in Cambodia after the country reported its first human case of avian flu in 2004, Omi said he followed a motorbike with live chickens tied across its back wheel to a small rural market, where he watched a woman pull intestines from the animals with her bare hands.

"If the birds she was handling had been infected with avian influenza virus, I'm sure she would have picked up the infection," he said.

"She was a pleasant, hard-working woman. I asked if she knew anything about outbreaks of avian influenza in neighbouring countries. She said, 'no'," Omi said.

"My brief encounter in Cambodia illustrates the hard realities not only in Cambodia but throughout Asia and beyond. Recent outbreaks in Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Russia have made it clear that avian influenza is not limited to Asia."

Most of the people killed in Asia since 2003 caught the virus from infected birds. The greatest worry is that the highly pathogenic strain of the disease known as H5N1 could mutate and become transmissible between people.

"We must not underestimate the threat from emerging diseases such as pandemic influenza," the health agency's global director-general, Dr Lee Jong-wook, said. "The only condition missing is the emergence of a virus that is capable of rapid transmission among humans."

Lee said the flu pandemics of the 1950s and 1960s killed five million people, and they were only mild pandemics.

Time running out

Millions of poultry have been culled in Asia since bird flu was first reported in 2003.

The World Health Organisation advocates mass culling when an outbreak occurs; some countries do not go along with that.

WHO says it is only a matter of time before the flu virus mutates and spreads between humans, becoming a pandemic which could kill tens of millions.

The H5N1 strain of the disease has already killed 64 people and has spread to Russia and Europe.

- REUTERS