AFRICA: Africa: Lacking the financial support it says it needs to fight the spread of bird flu
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations] NAIROBI, 10 February (IRIN) - Africa has not received any of the money it was promised at the international bird flu conference in Beijing last month, according to the director of the African Union's Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources, Modibo Traore. With news of the spread of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in northern Nigeria, these funds are now urgently needed. "We are appealing to our partners in the international community to quickly help the African continent avoid the spread of bird flu into other countries and regions of Africa," Traore told IRIN in Nairobi on Friday. "We are very concerned that this disease could develop into an African pandemic. The situation in Nigeria is already very serious." During a pledging conference in the Chinese capital in January, Africa was promised US$ 150 million to help protect itself against this strain of avian flu. Pledges of more than US$ one billion were called for to fight bird flu worldwide. "We need this money urgently to update laboratories, improve diagnostic services on a regional level, and provide the capacity to purchase animal vaccines," Traore said. "From the money that was pledged, we haven't received anything yet." Some of the money intended for Africa was also meant to help governments compensate their citizens for any domestic birds that needed to be culled, and to step up information campaigns in rural areas. Currently, only two laboratories on the African continent are able to conduct safe diagnostic tests for bird flu in animals - one in South Africa, the other in Egypt. Traore said laboratories in Senegal, Ivory Coast and Kenya needed urgent upgrading, in order to be able to conduct the right tests without putting staff at risk of being infected. "We want to establish regional offices which can serve the whole of Africa. There is no need for a specialised laboratory in each country, but we urgently need to reduce the time span between detection and confirmation of the disease." The lack of testing facilities is partly to blame for the fact that it took almost a month to confirm the new outbreak of bird flu in northern Nigeria. The presence of the H5N1 virus was confirmed this week by a laboratory in Italy, Traore said. Daniele Donati, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation's Emergency Coordinator for Africa, told IRIN in Nairobi that the FAO is also banging on donors' doors in a search for funds to fight avian flu. "Donors are reluctant to pay for life insurance if the risk is considered low," he said. "We need to use all humanitarian assets in the field to strengthen the capacity for early detection." During the bird flu conference, African countries were divided into two categories - one high risk, the other low or medium risk. According to Traore, this classification no longer applies, as Nigeria was not viewed as high risk. Traore said Africa's attempts to control bird flu would be channelled through PACE, a pan-African programme for controlling animal diseases. Its 30 member states do have surveillance networks for animal disease, but he says, Africa's 23 other states do not. To complicate matters, H5N1 is not always easy to detect, displaying almost the same symptoms as a disease endemic to many parts of Africa called "Newcastle disease" - a poultry disease harmless to humans. Many people who keep chickens in Africa, are quite used to slaughtering and eating birds infected with Newcastle disease, and only well-equipped laboratories can distinguish between it and H5N1 avian flu. "It is highly important that all veterinary organisations all over Africa are alerted to this problem, and treat each assumed case of Newcastle disease with suspicion as a potential case of bird flu," Troare said. The Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (IBAR) that Traore heads also warns that once avian flu breaks out of its current confinement to commercial chicken farms, and enters village environments in Africa, disaster could be imminent. Despite this, because so many people in Africa rear chickens, FAO and IBAR do not necessarily want people to stop buying chicken to eat. "Raising alarm could put livelihoods in danger, and impact in a meat and food crisis," the FAO's Donati said. "This could hurt particularly women, for whom chickens and eggs are a cheap source of protein, and a source of income." [ENDS] This is non-reply e-mail. Please do not hesitate to contact us at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Principal donors: IRIN is generously supported by Australia, Canada, Denmark, ECHO, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. 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