China, ASEAN warn against laxness over bird flu

China, ASEAN warn against laxness over bird flu

Associated Press
Beijing

Chinese and Southeast Asian officials meeting to discuss joint
strategy against bird flu warned on Tuesday against relaxing
vigilance and called for closer cooperation even as they
expressed confidence the outbreak was contained.

The officials at the one-day meeting of China and the 10-
member Association of Southeast Asian nations (ASEAN) called for
sharing more research and information on local outbreaks.

"We cannot just stop here, because the disease will be
mutating," said Thai Deputy Prime Minister Suwit Khunkitti. "I
think I can say it's contained. But (with) this kind of disease,
we have to be keeping up with new developments all the time."

China organized the conference as a follow-up to an emergency
meeting in January in Bangkok where Asian officials pledged to
set up a regional laboratory network and step up surveillance.

It came a day after officials in Japan confirmed that an
outbreak that killed hundreds of thousands of chickens was caused
by the same strain that has killed 22 people in Vietnam and
Thailand.

Regionwide, governments have slaughtered 100 million chickens,
ducks and other poultry in efforts to control the virus.

"Asian countries are presently facing a very huge crisis,"
said Cambodia's agriculture secretary of state, Chan Tong Yves.

He said the scale of the threat to human health and economies
hurt by damage to the poultry industry "requires broad
collaboration and strong political willingness."

Suwit, the Thai official, said he expected a planned joint
statement by the ministers to call for creation of a "network of
information" among regional health officials.

China and ASEAN created a similar warning network last year
during the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)
to alert each other to possible cases among travelers.

"What we learned so much from SARS is that a disease in one
country is a threat to another," said Henk Bekedam, the World
Health Organization representative in Beijing. "If one country is
successful, but the other is not, it still poses a threat that it
will reoccur."