HEALTH: ‘Surveillance Key to Tackling Bird Flu’

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Jan 13 2006 (IPS) – Surveillance and capacity building in countries hit by the avian flu virus have been identified as key to containing a potential pandemic, said experts at an international conference on the pestilence that ended here on Friday.
We can have the best medicine for combating Avian flu but unless the virus is detected at the grass-root level the drugs do not become useful, said Shigeru Omi, director for the western pacific region of the World Health Organization (WHO), which co-sponsored the two-day meet with the Japanese government.

The conference, Omi noted, marked the first time that the world has come together to work on developing a concept based on containment.

Turkey became the latest victim of the virus after two persons died of it, this month. In all, between Dec. 2003 and Jan. 10 this year, 78 people are known to have died of avian bird flu with at least 150 people hospitalised after being infected with the deadly H5N1 strain, that first surfaced in Hong Kong in 1997.

Delegates agreed that combating bird flu can succeed only with the participation of a wide cross section of agencies that includes not only the health and agricultural sectors but also immigration, police, education and transport departments.

In a concluding statement, delegates representing affected Asian countries and the donor community, pledged to immediately launch an international task force to contain the disease that has, until the Turkey outbreak, been confined to Asia.
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Friday s statement also called for greater efforts on the national regional and international level to strengthen current laboratory networks to detect early signals in affected countries and provide training towards rapid response.

We have a pandemic in Asia and will continue to see more infected human cases as long as poultry gets infected. The priority is for a solid containment policy to develop an early response to control the infection in birds, said Koji Fukuda, senior scientist with the WHO s global programme.

Fukuda explained that the task force will comprise international health and flu experts who will work independently with national governments of affected countries.

The task force will be mandated to provide medical expertise as well as increased surveillance and public awareness to build national capacities that will speed up detection to combat the disease.

The World Bank has estimated that between 1.2 and 1.5 billion US dollars would be needed to contain the H5N1 virus that causes bird flu.

Omi said, a pledging conference in Beijing next week will concentrate on gaining financial resources which will then be shared according to what has been finalised at Tokyo where delegates put forward their needs and worked out ways to collaborate.

Omi described the H5N1 virus would be particularly lethal if it mutates into a strain capable of being passed among human but admitted that it was impossible to predict the path that the virus will take henceforth.

Only God will know what is the future. Looking at the past cases we know the H5N1 virus is unpredictable, which is all the more reason to concentrate on an early response, he said.

Experts at the meeting thought it takes between two and three weeks after an outbreak of the virus among birds before it gets passed to humans in a particular area. This period provided a window of opportunity for experts to respond and contain the spread.

Asian representatives in Tokyo agreed that there was an urgent need to build capacities in order to strike early and prevent the pandemic from spiraling out of control.

Maria Linda Sitanggang, an expert on drugs and participant in the Indonesian team says most Asian governments are prepared to combat the disease but the challenge lay in the implementation process.

Lack of finances and expertise are key problems at the national level which is why there must be more support both in the region and the world that focuses on this aspect.

We need leadership from the WHO through technical expertise to help countries meet international standards, she said.

Bounlay Phommasack, a representative for the Laos explained that while his country has no cases of infected humans, there is a feeling of crisis given the weak national testing and training programmes as well the difficulty in providing effective surveillance.

Laos is a mountainous country where it is difficult to conduct testing or diagnosis. We need international help, he said pointing out that 80 percent of poultry rearing is conducted in the backyards of homes.

Hosts Japan pledged 35 million US dollars for Asia to combat avian flu and also promised 500,000 doses of Tamiflu, an anti-viral drug.

Japan itself contained the disease through heavy investments in eradication methods in its large farms, has emerged as a leader in the fight to combat the disease in Asia.

Experts agreed Japan has scored again with this conference which WHO experts are already calling landmark in containing future lethal viruses through focus on containment and early response.