International donors' conference on bird flu opens in Beijing
(AP)
Updated: 2006-01-17 10:35

Disease experts urged rich countries at a donors conference Tuesday to come up with the US$1.5 billion (euro1.4 billion) that the World Bank says is needed to tackle bird flu and prepare for a potential pandemic in humans.

"We're talking about a tremendous amount of money here for an issue that is clearly of global importance. The stakes are very high," James LeDuc, a viral illness expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told The Associated Press at the opening of a two-day conference in Beijing.

"Whether it's SARS, or monkey pox, or avian influenza, or whatever the next outbreak, the capacity that we're building is going to be very important for global health," he said.

The international donors' conference in Beijing is focused on raising money to fight bird flu, which has killed at least 79 people in Asia and Turkey since 2003.

A World bank official earlier told The Associated Press that donors were expected to pledge some US$1 billion (euro822 million).

"We're anticipating a very generous EU response, we have a very strong commitment from the U.S. (and) we expect the Japanese to come with a strong commitment," Jim Adams, head of the World Bank's Avian Flu Task Force, said.

Most human cases have been traced to contact with infected birds, but experts fear the H5N1 bird flu virus could mutate into a form that passes easily between people, possibly sparking a pandemic.

The World Bank has said that up to US$1.5 billion (euro1.4 billion) is needed over the next three years to fight bird flu and prepare for a pandemic. More than US$500 million would be devoted to building country rapid response plans in both the animal and human health sectors, the World Bank said.

About 45 percent of the funding would be spent in Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand and Laos - countries where the H5N1 virus is already endemic, it said.

The funding conference follows a global bird flu coordination meeting held two months ago in Geneva, which brought together more than 600 participants from 100 countries.

Adams said between 500-600 people are expected to attend the Beijing meeting, co-sponsored by the World Bank, European Commission and the Chinese government.

Based on the damage that severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, caused to Asia's economy after it emerged in southern China in 2002, the World Bank says a flu pandemic in humans could result in US$800 billion (euro640 billion) in global losses in a year.