Mexico wants "financial compensation" for revealing flu (Roundup)

May 14, 2009, 22:20 GMT

Mexico City/Prague - Mexico on Thursday was considering a request to the World Health Organization (WHO) for 'financial compensation' for countries that go public with epidemics to their own detriment.

'We are looking at the mechanisms that could emerge for international financial organs to bear this in mind, because in the end the country that does the right thing - that reports (the outbreak), that shares - that is the most affected country,' Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos said.

Mexico has been at the centre of an influenza epidemic of the new A(H1N1) virus, with a confirmed death toll of 64 and a total of 2,656 confirmed infections.

'The damage to health and the financial damage for other countries would have been enormous' had not Mexico issued an early alert on April 23, when the presence of a new virus was confirmed and authorities adopted measures to combat the outbreak, Cordova Villalobos said.

He plans to raise the issue of compensation at next week's annual WHO assembly.

The flu epidemic has had a severe impact on the Mexican economy, particularly tourism. Many charter flights have been cancelled, hotels are half-empty, and cruise ships have avoided docking in Mexican ports.

'The suggestion is that the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank be the organs' that provide financial assistance in the wake of epidemics, working through the WHO, Cordova Villalobos said.

Mexico estimates that the epidemic cost 0.3-0.5 per cent of its gross domestic product, contributing to an overall contraction of 4 per cent this year in the Mexican economy, amid the global recession.

Mexican authorities hope that flu-related losses, already some 2.2 billion dollars, will be short-lived.

'Our infrastructure and production capacity have not been affected by this crisis. This leads me to think that we will be able to recover quickly,' Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa said through an interpreter after meeting with European Union leaders in Prague.

Espinosa turned the four-day Prague-based meeting of European Union and Latin American officials into a campaign to salvage Mexico's reputation as a tourist destination.

'You can travel to Mexico safely,' she said Thursday.

Cordova Villalobos said that 90 per cent of those infected with the virus reported their first symptoms before April 23.

He said that a case of the new flu was confirmed Wednesday in Baja California Sur, leaving just one of the country's 32 states, the northern state of Coahuila, with no recorded cases.

Mexico was the early centre of the outbreak, but the United States has now accounted for more than half of the nearly 6,500 confirmed cases of the new influenza A(H1N1) virus, according to worldwide figures released Thursday by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

The pan-European agency tallied some 6,497 global cases including 3,352 in the United States, 2,446 in Mexico and 389 in Canada. International figures typically lag behind those reported by individual countries due to reporting delays.

The number of cases in Panama almost doubled Thursday to 29. Costa Rica and Brazil each had eight cases, Colombia had six, and El Salvador had four cases, the ECDC said.

In Asia, China reported two new cases, raising its confirmed total to four, while Thailand reported its first two cases.

In Europe there were 222 confirmed infections, including 100 in Spain and 71 in Britain.

Beyond the death toll in Mexico, three fatalities in the United States and one in Canada.