Bird flu drug aid boosted
Sydney Morning Herald -- By Cynthia Banham -- September 27, 2005
smh.com.au
Australia is giving Indonesia thousands more doses of the antiviral drug Tamiflu as it struggles to deal with the latest outbreak of bird flu.
As a 27-year-old Indonesian woman died in a Jakarta hospital yesterday from suspected bird flu, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, announced Australia would fund 40,000 more courses of the antiviral drug, on top of the 10,000 it agreed to pay for last week.
Mr Downer said Indonesian authorities had been "caught a bit short" by the bird flu outbreak - which they have described as an epidemic - and were "finding it difficult to handle".
"We're doing everything we can to help them, and so we should," Mr Downer said.
The Opposition foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, accused Mr Downer of "stating the bleeding obvious" and complacency.
"Experts have been warning about the potential of a bird flu pandemic for over a year," Mr Rudd said.
He said Australia needed to take a leadership role if it was to make a constructive contribution in combating bird flu in Asia, and said it should begin by hosting a regional ministerial-level meeting on the disease.
Mr Downer said the Government was concerned that bird flu might mutate and spread between humans.
"We are concerned that could happen, and if that did happen that would create a substantial epidemic with quite severe consequences, perhaps very severe consequences," he said.
Mr Downer said there was "no question" bird flu could arrive in Australia because of migrating birds, and that had already occurred in Russia.
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