Asian countries appeal for bird flu help

Asian countries battling a bird flu virus that threatens to create a human pandemic that could kill millions need urgent help from the wealthy West if they are to succeed, a 28-nation conference said on Friday.

"The threat is real and the potential is very high" for a pandemic, Samuel Jutzi of the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization told a news conference at the end of the three-day conference on bird flu.

"The longer the virus continues to circulate in poultry production systems and ducks, the higher is the probability of infection of humans," he said in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's commercial hub.

All 28 nations sought "external support," Jutzi said, but worst-affected Vietnam is the only one to have appealed for help publicly.

"Our financial capacity is limited. We are trying our best," Agriculture Minister Cao Duc Phat told reporters.

Senior U.N. officials at the conference have complained about what one called "an alarming lack of commitment" from rich nations in the fight against the H5N1 virus.

They did not expect firm pledges, but even so the dire warnings of a pandemic did not appear to sink in, said FAO's Vietnam representative, Anton Rychener. "I heard many of the donor country representatives saying they didn't get a sense that there is a real emergency," he said.

He complained that rich nations spent $3 billion on subsidising their farmers over the three days of the conference. "If we attract one percent, it's $30 million for avian influenza. I'd be happy to see half a percent," he said.

Donors would have to cough up $100 million for the short-term fight against the virus, the conference said, and some officials said the sum could rise to $300 million. That did not include long-term restructuring and compensation costs that could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

According to estimates cited by the FAO, birdflu cost Asian farmers and agricultural industries $10 billion in 2004.

ANOTHER HUMAN CASE

Communist Vietnam has been hit hardest by the virus, which erupted across much of Asia at the end of 2003 and has killed 46 people - 33 Vietnamese, 12 Thais and a Cambodian.

It now has another case, a 21-year-old man whose younger sister may also have caught the virus, officials said.

The family did not raise chickens, but the man consumed raw duck blood before the Lunar New Year festival this month, said local official Tran Quoc Du. "He drank the blood, but his sister did not. After that, he had a mild fever," Du told Reuters. Other family members were being tested for the virus.

Last month in the same province, a man died after drinking duck blood and tests confirmed he had bird flu.

Almost all other people known to have caught the virus got it from contact with sick birds. It has killed more than 70 percent of people infected.