Health leaders grapple with two-front war on bird flu

By Veronika Oleksyn Oct 25, 2005, 3:33 GMT

Ottawa, Canada (dpa) - With a sense of urgency as bird flu spreads westward from Asia, world health leaders meeting for the first time in Canada are grappling with a two front war.

There's the effort to keep the disease from spreading among birds and animals, already at full tilt in many countries, especially Asia and in the last weeks in Europe. And there's the creeping worldwide fear that the H5N1 virus could mutate and become contagious among humans.

Health ministers from 30 countries and leaders of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the international Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) kicked off a two-day meeting Monday on the global fight against avian flu.

They stressed that international cooperation was key to containing the deadly bird flu virus that has killed hundreds of millions of wild and domestic fowl - and more than 60 people.

But uppermost in many remarks was the worry about the shortage of antiviral medicines and vaccines.

Only 40 countries have plans in place for a global pandemic, said Jong-Wook Lee, WHO's director-general. He warned at the opening session at Canada's Foreign Ministery that the next global human flu pandemic 'could appear at any time' and would likely stem from avian flu.

Mexico called for richer countries to help poorer in developing a vaccine and producing antiviral medicines to take if the illness starts spreading among people.

'Many middle income countries have the capacity to produce vaccines - we don't have to start from zero,' Mexico's Health Minister Julio Frenk told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in a telephone interview.

Frenk has also asked that wealthy countries set aside antiviral drugs for use by poorer nations in the event of a pandemic. Lee however seemed skeptical that when push came to shove during an outbreak countries would actually be willing to give some of their antivirals to help others in need.

In the interview, Frenk said countries such as Mexico, Brazil and India could greatly contribute to the global effort to come up with a vaccine to protect people against a human version of bird flu - if they got pointers from more scientifically-advanced countries.

Only nine countries currently have the capacity to develop and produce a vaccine targeting the lethal H5N1 strain of avian flu that has led to mass culls of poultry in Asia and parts of Eastern Europe, according to Frenk.

The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche has caused 'concern' in the international public health community for its reluctance to allow generic versions of its antiviral drug Tamiflu to be produced, one official said.

'The international community is concerned about that,' said Ujjal Dosanjh, Canada's health minister, on his way into the meeting. 'In Canada, we respect the intellectual property but we also have regulations that in an emergency we have the mechanism to deal with that kind of an issue very quickly.'

Earlier Monday, Roche cautioned countries against producing their own generic versions of the drug Tamiflu, which has been shown to lessen the effects of flu in humans. Roche holds the patent until 2016, but late last week agreed to meet with four pharmaceutical companies that said they had the capacity to produce the drug. <!--page-->

Taiwan's Health Minister told reporters in Taiwan on Monday that Roche had indicated it would discuss the issue of possible production in Taiwan. But it said it was laying the legal groundwork to produce Tamiflu without Roche's permission if the country suffers a serious outbreak before receiving a production license, Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA) reported.

But there was a danger of 'over-medicalizing' the threat, WHO's Lee said.

Jacques Diouf, head of the international Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), warned that 'we shouldn't forget about the fact that it's still just an animal disease'.

'We need to make sure that these conditions under which animals mix with humans' receive more attention, he said. 'I think it's not one or the other, it has to be both.'

Efforts will be made at the gathering to reach out to countries - especially those in Southeast Asia - that are largely rural and poor, officials said. Canada recently launched a five-year project to increase the ability of public health systems in Southeast Asia and China to detect and effectively respond to infectious diseases such as bird flu.

The United States has also pledged funds for this purpose.

'We need a rapid and clear plan of what is happening,' Lee said. 'I believe this is the time to act.'