Compensating poultry farmers fast and fairly is central to a global fight against bird flu that is projected to cost an extra $1.2-1.5 billion over the next 2-3 years, international experts said on Monday.
A report released ahead of a bird flu meeting and donor summit this week by the World Bank, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the International Food Policy Research Institute, urged more effective compensation programmes to ensure farmers whose birds fall sick tell the authorities.
"The effort to tackle avian flu can only succeed with the most thorough and rapid co-operation of farmers, smallholders, and others who depend on their poultry for a living," United Nations pandemic and influenza co-ordinator David Nabarro said.
"They must be compensated for birds and other property that are destroyed as part of control efforts. All countries want guidance on how best to go about effective compensation," Nabarro said in comments emailed to Reuters.
Since 2003, avian influenza has killed or forced the culling of an estimated 250 million poultry birds, mainly in Asia, as veterinary officials have scrambled to control the disease.
Compensation will be a key agenda item at a December 6-8 bird flu summit in the West African country of Mali, with a focus on how much to pay farmers and how they should be paid. The joint report recommended the international community be prepared to fund compensation in countries too poor to pay their own farmers, saying it was clearly in the interests of developed countries' own livestock industries to control disease.
It recommended poultry farmers affected by culls receive prompt payment of 75-90 percent of the value of the lost stock, to ensure farmers are prepared to notify authorities. This should be combined with strict oversight and controls on poultry movements to prevent farmers from outside a culling zone claiming cash. "Experience suggests that compensation schemes are particularly susceptible to fraud, error and abuse," it said.
MORE FUNDS NEEDED: In a separate report prepared for the Mali summit, which will include a donor conference, the World Bank said $1.2-1.5 billion extra funding would be needed over the next two to three years over and above $1.9 billion pledged in January in Beijing.
But it said the sums were a fraction of the potential $1.5-$2 trillion costs of a severe human influenza pandemic. Scientists fear the deadly virus could mutate into a version able to pass between people, triggering a global pandemic which could potentially kill tens of millions of people.
Since 2003 bird flu has infected 258 people who came into contact with sick birds, killing 154 of them, according to WHO figures. Asia, where the outbreak started, has been hardest hit. The extra funding projected by the World Bank includes $466 million for Africa, where bird flu has affected a handful of countries. Experts fear poor monitoring could allow outbreaks to go undetected, giving the virus more time to spread.
"The largest increases in needs are in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and North Africa, which reflects both the spread of the disease to those regions and the relatively poor conditions of veterinary and public health services in most of the countries of those regions," it said.
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