Time to rake in the cash! Animal health watchdog OIE urges bird flu compensation panels.
recommended that panels should be formed to set up funds to compensate farmers affected by bird flu.
11.08.2005, 10:20 AM
GENEVA (AFX) - Bernard Vallat, director-general of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), has recommended that panels should be formed to set up funds to compensate farmers affected by bird flu.
Vallat said it is important to get the private sector -- farmers, food manufacturers and distributors -- closely involved in the avian flu crisis. He suggested setting up panels that would include their representatives and those from the government and health area.
He suggested the panels should set up compensation funds to encourage farmers to report infections swiftly and honestly. More than 120 out of 167 out of the OIE's members do not have an effective mechanism for compensating farmers for lost animals, he said.
'The prime goal is to reduce viral excretion and the circulation of the virus in fowl and other domestic birds,' said Vallat.
'Reducing the virus (in birds) reduces the risks of a human pandemic.'
Vallat said early detection and reporting of the H5N1 virus is vital. For every 48 hours that elapses between an outbreak and action, 'the costs multiply thousands of times,' he said.
The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the OIE have drawn up an emergency plan for filling these gaps that would cost around 175 mln usd, 102 mln of which would go to Asia and the rest to Eastern Europe and Africa.
Only 30 mln usd have been contributed so far, officials from those organisations said last Friday.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) coordinator on the pandemic, Klaus Stoehr, today repeated an estimate that a global outbreak would take 2-7 mln lives. He said early warning gains precious time for devising a vaccine to protect against the mutated virus. |
