Experts urge extra billion dollars to fight bird flu

World donors must extend around an extra billion dollars to fight bird flu as the deadly virus spreads to ill-prepared countries in Africa and the Middle East, experts said Tuesday.
UN avian influenza coordinator David Nabarro and World Bank economist Olga Jonas said the funding requirements would be addressed at the fourth global conference on the virus being held in Mali from December 6 to 8.
They said another 986 million to 1.3 billion dollars is needed over the next two to three years, in addition to 1.9 billion agreed by donors at the last conference held in January in Beijing.
Of the extra funding, 566 million dollars must go to Africa alone, the experts told reporters on a conference call.
"At the time of Beijing, in January 2006, the virus had not yet appeared anywhere in Africa, or in Eastern Europe, or the Middle East," Jonas said.
She said that today about 50 countries have been hit by bird flu, against only a dozen when the Beijing conference was held 11 months ago.
At next month's gathering in Mali's capital Bamako, according to Nabarro, "we'll be looking not just at the needs of Africa but that will be a central focus of the discussion".
"We have also been concerned about the capacity of Middle Eastern and African countries to respond adequately to the stresses posed by avian influenza," he said, highlighting Egypt and Nigeria in particular.
The Bamako meeting, jointly organized by Mali's government, the European Union and the African Union, will include ministers of health and those in charge of the fight against bird flu, veterinary experts and doctors from over 100 countries.
The H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus, which can be transmitted to humans and is potentially fatal, has steadily spread west since it first appeared in Asia in late 2003.
In Africa, eight countries -- Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Djibouti, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Niger and Sudan -- have been affected.