HEALTH: Avian Flu Brings South Asian Countries Together

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Feb 16 2004 (IPS) - Fear of the deadly bird flu has had the positive effect of bringing together the members of South Asia’s regional grouping, whose seven countries do not always see eye-to-eye with each other.

Meeting Monday in emergency session, health and livestock representatives from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries – Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives – called for strict infection control measures and the enforcement of a ban on import of live poultry and poultry meat products, eggs and egg products.

In fact, Pakistan, the only SAARC country where there has been an outbreak of avian flu, and its long-term political rival India are now part of an agreement to cooperate on measures to prevent spread of the disease by sharing data and extending technological support.

”We are offering our technical services to any SAARC country – we are not playing politics on technical matters,” Baz Junejo, director general of livestock and fisheries in the Sindh province of Pakistan, which experienced the outbreak, told IPS in an interview soon after the meeting ended.

India and Pakistan began Monday a series of peace talks directly proceeding from a SAARC summit in Islamabad in January, when Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf, meeting on the sidelines, agreed to work towards rapprochement.

The two countries then decided not to let the issue of Kashmir, the territory they have been in dispute over for more than 50 years, interfere in cooperation in economic and other fields for the betterment of their large populations.

Junejo said Pakistan has already developed an effective vaccine against the H7N1 subtype of the avian flu and was ready to share it with any country that required it. The H7N1 variety is not highly pathogenic – it does not affect humans as the H5N, which has already killed 14 people in Vietnam and six others in Thailand.

For its part, India has offered up its prestigious National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD), located in the capital, as the nodal reporting agency for the avian flu and as a repository of information that it would undertake to disseminate over the Internet.

India’s health secretary, Prasada Rao, said that Monday’s meeting, the first of its kind in the face of a regional health emergency, was the result of agreements under SAARC to ”enhance inter-country cooperation to address problems of emerging and re-emerging diseases.”

Monday’s meeting resulted in the setting up of a SAARC surveillance centre at the NICD and a Rapid Deployment Health System with collaboration from the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

”The emphasis will be on strengthening surveillance, recording, reporting, diagnosis and management of the disease by the exchange and pooling of expertise and resources within the SAARC member states,” Rao said.

Indian Health Minister Sushma Swaraj said there was indeed a need to ”combat the problem of the psychological front”. Swaraj had earlier come under criticism for ordering a ban on the import of poultry into India – even though this country does not import meat of any kind – and thereby triggering off panic.

”Even though not a single case of avian flu has been reported in India, the general public has already pressed the panic buttonsà…. we must deal with the epidemic or the threat of the epidemic,” Swaraj said.

Swaraj remarked that the avian bird flu has once again reinforced ”the importance of regional groupings such as SAARC”.

The director of communicable diseases at the WHO’s regional centre in New Delhi, N Kumara Rai, said the real danger at the moment was the possibility that the avian bird flu could mutate into one capable of rapidly infecting human populations. This could lead to disastrous results, such as the 1918 Spanish flu, which caused nearly 50 million deaths.

Rai said the infrastructure for surveillance, clinical care and laboratory support already existed in most of the SAARC countries, but there was a need for adequate surveillance of influenza and other viral infections. ”This may need strengthening based on country-specific need assessment,” he said.

WHO’s strategy for the region, Rai said, was to help reduce risk by encouraging culling and large-scale slaughter of birds and providing protection and immunisation for individuals at risk. Such work was already being undertaken in Pakistan.

Rai said South Asia had to remain watchful because there was no indication yet that the outbreak would be contained within the next two months. ”Based on our experience in Vietnam and Thailand, we are still concerned that the outbreak is not going to be contained in the next one or two months,” he said.

FAO, represented at the meeting by Hans-Gerhard Wagner from the Asia-Pacific office of the organisation in Bangkok, had even grimmer news and said it could take months or even years before the world could be avian flu virus threat could be declared to have receded.

”Surveillance must continue,” Wagner said.