APEC officials tour chicken farm in Vietnam
DANANG - Delegates attending an Asia-Pacific meeting on bird flu Saturday donned masks, goggles and biohazard suits as they explored a chicken farm in central Vietnam for a firsthand look at how hygiene is maintained.
The tour came after the region's agriculture and health ministers on Friday endorsed a plan aimed at stamping out bird flu and preparing for a potential flu pandemic.
The 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation also plans to conduct a tabletop mock pandemic exercise next month to test the region's preparedness.
"These countries have been dealing with avian influenza for several years and have clearly advanced thinking on it, so that's why I wanted to be here this morning to look at the activities that were successful here in Vietnam,'' said John Lange, the U.S. special representative for avian influenza.
"They've been dealing with it and we're just expecting it.''
Experts fear the H5N1 bird flu virus, which began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003, could mutate and potentially spark a global pandemic.
The virus has killed at least 114 people worldwide, but most human cases have been linked to contact with infected birds.
The farm in Hoa Quy village in the coastal town of Danang had about 7,000 chickens, all of which had been vaccinated. Laying hens were kept in cages in an enclosed coop sprayed with disinfectant.
Much of the poultry in Vietnam and throughout Asia, however, is produced on a much smaller scale, with many households raising a handful of chickens in backyards.
Such farming practices are much harder to control and make it easier for the H5N1 virus to spread.
A regional action plan adopted Friday calls for the restructuring of some backyard farming practices into larger, more controlled operations.
Officials said Australia will coordinate a regional practice exercise on June 7-8, with help from Singapore, to see how well countries respond and cooperate during a mock pandemic scenario.
The Assocociated Press - May 6, 2006.
APEC agrees plan to cope with flu pandemic
DANANG - Asia-Pacific ministers from rich and poor countries meeting in Vietnam pledged to work together to prevent or mitigate the impact of the feared first human flu pandemic of the 21st century.
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (
APEC) meeting agreed on an action plan to respond to a potential human outbreak of bird flu in one of the group's 21 member countries -- and to help its societies and economies cope and recover.
"We are living in an increasingly globalised world," said Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan, opening the meeting.
"The epidemic has quickly spread from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and I am afraid it's very hard for America to avoid being affected."
Member countries committed to promptly report all human and animal outbreaks, share data on the virus, jointly test emergency responses and assure speedy access to anti-viral medicines during a pandemic.
To ready for a major outbreak, members said they would pre-authorise visas and customs clearance for WHO rapid response teams, and encourage companies and state agencies to approve "business continuity plans."
They also pledged to "develop information exchange on management of travellers to increase transparency and minimise risk to travel and trade."
APEC health task force chair Ian Shugart said, in case of a pandemic, "there will be absenteeism from work, there will be disruptions in our economies."
"With respect to travel, we want to keep the ability of people to move between economies as they go about their business as open as possible, recognising that there will be an impact on things like tourism and trade.
"What we want to make sure is that when economies make decisions about mobility of people, they make them on the basis of good scientific evidence, that these are not motivated by fear."
John Lange, the US State Department's top bird flu official, said, "it is in everyone's interest to keep this world economy going, to keep people travelling.
"But there may have to be some constraints placed all around the world when a pandemic strikes, if one does strike. So, basically we set the framework for decision-making, other decisions come later on."
Epidemiologists say the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu requires very close contact to jump the species barrier. Tens of millions of infected birds have passed the virus on to a total of 204 people in two and a half years.
Of these known and World Health Organisation-confirmed cases, more than half have died, with 92 of the world's 113 known bird flu fatalities in just four APEC members -- China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.
Experts fear H5N1 could mutate to become highly contagious among people, sparking a flu pandemic like the three that each killed millions in the 20th century.
"This virus is very changeable and very unstable and very unpredictable," said Shigeru Omi, WHO's Western Pacific regional director.
It attacks multiple organs, including the kidneys and respiratory system, said WHO's Vietnam chief Hans Troedsson. "It is very, very nasty. It has a high mortality rate, up to 50 percent, which is very rare," he said.
The spread of the disease has gathered pace, striking 30 new countries and regions this year, warned Tran Trong Toan, head of the APEC secretariat of the three-day meeting of health and agriculture ministers and officials.
World Bank Vietnam director Klaus Rohland said "fighting avian flu is something like a global public good, something that you have to do in the interest of mankind.
"There is often discussion on whether development assistance is charity or altruistic, but clearly in the case of avian flu this is in everyone's interest, to fight and contain the disease at source."
Agence France Presse - May 5, 2006.
APEC bird flu meeting aims to prevent pandemic
DANANG - Asia-Pacific countries met in Vietnam to find ways to either prevent or cope with a bird flu pandemic that experts say could kill millions of people.
"We have to admit the possibility that the virus could at some point become capable of transmission from human to human," said Ian Shugart, chair of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (
APEC) health task force.
"Should that happen and an influenza disease be spread rapidly among the human population, the consequences would be serious for social structures and for economies.
"So we want to protect human life by keeping this virus in the birds so that it doesn't spread into the humans."
APEC health and agriculture ministers were due to adopt an action plan Friday, including a call on the group's 21 members to promptly share all information on new cases to stop or slow human outbreaks.
A draft of the plan warned that a pandemic would disrupt "essential services such as health and security, mass transportation, the service industry and the travel and tourism sectors."
APEC members China, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam have suffered human cases and the virus has infected birds in Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Russia and
South Korea.
Vietnam, which will host the annual APEC summit in November, has been the worst hit, with 42 human deaths out of the global total of 113.
As bird flu has spread to Europe and Africa, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that "the risk of a pandemic is great."
WHO Vietnam chief Hans Troedsson said "historically, we will clearly have another influenza pandemic... However, no one can predict when, and we can't say that it will be H5N1 or a more benign strain. But the threat is there."
A flu pandemic has never been prevented but Troedsson said there is hope.
"If we could detect it at an early stage -- say there are 30, 40, maybe 100 people in an area -- you have a window of 14 to 21 days where you could be able to contain it by going in and cordoning off the area, treating with anti-virals the whole population and restricting movement in an out of this area.
"However, if you miss that window of opportunity, you will have an epidemic in the country that in a couple of weeks would spread in the region, and in one or two months' time you would have a global pandemic."
The draft plan stresses the role of transparency.
"The main benefit of transparency in early reporting is that the world can then know where there is an outbreak and the international organisations that deal with this problem can respond," Shugart said.
To improve communications during a possible pandemic, Australia and Singapore plan to coordinate a regional "desktop" communications drill on June 7-8 with other APEC countries.
If the draft action plan is approved, members will also pledge to shift from backyard poultry farms and live bird markets to more bio-secure facilities.
And they will streamline visa and customs rules to allow the WHO's rapid response teams to quickly arrive at the scene of an outbreak.
Shugart, of the Canadian health ministry, said the plan was likely to be adopted. Officials were "pretty much of the same mind," he said.
"We also talked about what we do to keep economies working and... to keep trade and the movement of people going if there were a pandemic, and how to get things going again after a pandemic, should that ever happen," he said.
John Lange, the US State Department's top bird flu official, said worst-case scenarios, like the 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic that killed tens of millions, would "really overwhelm" many public health systems.
"This influenza does not know borders. We have to work together on this."
Agence France Presse - May 4, 2006.
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