Experts warn of human, financial bird flu cost
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A flu pandemic lasting a year could cost the global economy up to $800 billion, the World Bank said on Monday, as China asked for international help to double check whether bird flu had killed a 12-year-old girl.
The World Bank set out the possible financial cost at a three-day meeting in Geneva at which hundreds of experts are drawing up a strategy to prevent bird flu from developing into a pandemic in which millions could die.
“Normally it takes six months to design a programme of this kind. We have three days,” the senior U.N. coordinator for avian and human influenza, David Nabarro, said at the talks, stressing the need to boost surveillance and reporting.
The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has killed 63 people in four Asian countries and led to the culling of 150 million birds worldwide. It has recently spread to eastern Europe and is expected to move into the Middle East and Africa.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed on Monday that China, the world’s most populous nation, had asked it to probe a death that could be linked to bird flu.
China, which has yet to report any cases of bird flu in humans, has invited WHO experts to investigate three suspicious cases of pneumonia in the southern province of Hunan, the site of one of a number of recent outbreaks of avian flu in birds.
Beijing had previously denied any connection between the deadly H5N1 form of the bird flu virus and the pneumonia cases.
Tests on the three did not show the presence of H5N1, but the virus could not be ruled out because the three lived close to the site of an outbreak, the official Xinhua news agency said.
One of the pneumonia patients, a 12-year-old girl, died.
China has also closed live poultry markets in Beijing and a number of other cities as a precaution.
“MATTER OF TIME”
WHO Director-General Lee Jong-Wook told the Geneva talks that migratory birds were carrying the virus into domestic poultry flocks around the world.
He said it was only a matter of time before an avian flu virus, most likely H5N1, acquired the ability to be transmitted from human to human.
“We don’t know when this will happen, but we know it will happen,” Lee said. “No society will be exempt.”
It is impossible to say how long any pandemic would last and how severe it would be, but it has the potential to cripple the global economy.
In a report presented in Geneva, the World Bank said a two-percent fall in global GDP during an influenza pandemic—like that caused by SARS in East Asia during the second quarter of 2003—would represent a loss of about $200 billion in output in one quarter or $800 billion over a year.
The World Bank report, obtained by Reuters, said a previous study on flu pandemics had suggested that any new outbreak could cause between 100,000 and 200,000 human deaths in the United States alone, which it said would translate into economic losses for the country of between $100 billion and $200 billion.
“We are broadly worried about trade in a globalised world, but two industries that would be particularly hit are tourism and agriculture,” said Jim Adams, a senior World Bank official.
The World Bank will launch an appeal for a $1 billion package at the conference, half of it to be provided through its grants or interest-free loans and half through a trust fund financed by donors, Adams said.
MORE TAMIFLU
Swiss drug company Roche said on Monday it was in talks with other drugmakers and governments to step up production of its antiviral drug Tamiflu, seen as the most effective method of fighting bird flu currently available.
“We have continually increased our production capacities and are now putting in place the means to increase production of Tamiflu to 300 million treatments as of 2007,” said William Burns, chief executive of Roche’s Pharma division.
Roche said it has received more than 150 requests from third parties to produce Tamiflu and is in early talks with eight companies, selecting potential partners for more detailed discussions by the end of November.
India told the Geneva conference that countries with the capacity to produce antivirals and vaccines should collaborate to avoid shortages in the developing world.
“It would be extremely counterproductive if we stockpile available vaccines and drugs at place A and B where they may not be required and find there are shortages where they are desperately needed,” Deepak Gupta, additional secretary at India’s Ministry of Health said.
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