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UN declares Bird Flu requires emergency measures

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Bird flu, which has killed 16 people in Asia, is not under control and could spread to other regions without the right preventative measures, experts from three international agencies said on Thursday.

Bird flu, which has killed 16 people in Asia, is not under control and could spread to other regions without the right preventative measures, experts from three international agencies said on Thursday. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the world animal health body (OIE) said in a joint statement that a targeted vaccination of poultry would help halt the spread of the disease. “Without the implementation of appropriate methods of disease control the risk of epidemic spread to further countries, including those in distant regions, is likely to remain high,” it said. Thursday’s statement criticised “a lack of timely reporting” of the infection and said the epidemic was still evolving. A teenage girl became the 16th human victim of an Asia-wide outbreak of bird flu, a Vietnamese doctor said on Thursday. Ten countries have reported outbreaks of bird flu, with 11 human deaths in Vietnam and five in Thailand. Health experts say the human victims have caught the flu from sick chickens and the virus is not being passed between people, but there are fears the bird flu virus could combine with a human flu virus and mutate into a new contagious disease. The FAO, WHO and OIE experts said at the end of a two-day meeting in Rome that bird flu would remain a threat to people as long as Asian poultry remained infected, but said they were hopeful the disease could be tamed. “We are confident that with broad international and regional collaboration in support of national efforts and using all available intervention tools, the crisis can be overcome and the risk to human health be minimized,” said Joseph Domenech, chief of the FAO’s Animal Health Service. The statement said culling animals remained the recommended action when the disease was detected but added that the killing could be contained if vaccination programmes were carried out. “The mass culling of flocks outside of infected sites in reaction to outbreaks might therefore be largely avoided and major damage to the livelihoods of rural households and national economies averted.” Thailand says it has culled 25.9 million poultry in mass slaughters and more than 14 million of Vietnam’s 250 million poultry have been destroyed so far. As part of its list of recommendation, the three international agencies called for the creation of co-ordination centres in each affected-country, improved surveillance and public education programmes. It added that international donor support was urgently needed to face up to the crisis.(Source: Reuters Health, ABC Health ews Online, Feb 2004)


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Dates

Posted On: 6 February, 2004
Modified On: 5 December, 2013


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