Sally Furniss
Well-known member
INTERVIEW-Myanmar pledges openness in bird flu fight
http://mobile.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK287205.htm
Military-ruled Myanmar will be open with information should bird flu ever infect humans there, its agriculture minister said on Tuesday, even as it fights an outbreak among chickens that began in late February.
The former Burma is seen by some international health experts as a potential black hole in the global fight against the disease, though recently the junta has been more open to accepting outside help.
"We are concerned that this is a global concern. We like to cooperate with the World Health Organisation, as well as all the concerned organisations," Major General Htay Oo told Reuters in a rare interview through an interpreter.
Newspapers have published daily reports on the latest outbreak north of the former capital, Yangon, after being slow to inform the public during the first outbreak early last year.
About 40,000 fowl have been slaughtered in five areas on the outskirts of the city during the outbreak.
Myanmar has had no reported human cases of the H5N1 virus, which experts fear could mutate into a form that would pass easily from person to person and spark an epidemic.
"The public will be kept informed through newspapers, television, radio and non-governmental organisations," he said, adding UNICEF and other international NGOs have helped with public awareness campaigns.
"Some suspected human cases have turned out not to be bird flu," added the minister, whose government is the subject of tough U.S. and E.U. sanctions for human rights abuses and the continued detention of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
The possibility of a bird flu outbreak in impoverished and secretive Myanmar worries international health experts, who fear the rudimentary health infrastructure could give the virus the chance to mutate and spread.
In a rare instance of international cooperation with the ruling junta, donors including Myanmar's loudest critic, the United States, have pledged $1.4 million in emergency bird flu assistance, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
"Myanmar relies on testing through labs in Australia and Thailand," Htay Oo said, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of regional farm officials in Beijing.
"Any time we have a suspected case we quarantine the area. We inform the public, send the chickens to a lab and cull other chickens," the minister said.
The virus is known to have infected at least 275 people in 12 countries since 2003. It has killed at least 167 people in 10 countries, most of them in Indonesia and Vietnam.
Backyard poultry farmers and slaughterers have been particularly vulnerable.
Many of Myanmar's people are subsistence farmers, with about 16 percent of the population undernourished as recently as 2003, according to agriculture ministry statistics.
http://mobile.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/PEK287205.htm
Military-ruled Myanmar will be open with information should bird flu ever infect humans there, its agriculture minister said on Tuesday, even as it fights an outbreak among chickens that began in late February.
The former Burma is seen by some international health experts as a potential black hole in the global fight against the disease, though recently the junta has been more open to accepting outside help.
"We are concerned that this is a global concern. We like to cooperate with the World Health Organisation, as well as all the concerned organisations," Major General Htay Oo told Reuters in a rare interview through an interpreter.
Newspapers have published daily reports on the latest outbreak north of the former capital, Yangon, after being slow to inform the public during the first outbreak early last year.
About 40,000 fowl have been slaughtered in five areas on the outskirts of the city during the outbreak.
Myanmar has had no reported human cases of the H5N1 virus, which experts fear could mutate into a form that would pass easily from person to person and spark an epidemic.
"The public will be kept informed through newspapers, television, radio and non-governmental organisations," he said, adding UNICEF and other international NGOs have helped with public awareness campaigns.
"Some suspected human cases have turned out not to be bird flu," added the minister, whose government is the subject of tough U.S. and E.U. sanctions for human rights abuses and the continued detention of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
The possibility of a bird flu outbreak in impoverished and secretive Myanmar worries international health experts, who fear the rudimentary health infrastructure could give the virus the chance to mutate and spread.
In a rare instance of international cooperation with the ruling junta, donors including Myanmar's loudest critic, the United States, have pledged $1.4 million in emergency bird flu assistance, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
"Myanmar relies on testing through labs in Australia and Thailand," Htay Oo said, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of regional farm officials in Beijing.
"Any time we have a suspected case we quarantine the area. We inform the public, send the chickens to a lab and cull other chickens," the minister said.
The virus is known to have infected at least 275 people in 12 countries since 2003. It has killed at least 167 people in 10 countries, most of them in Indonesia and Vietnam.
Backyard poultry farmers and slaughterers have been particularly vulnerable.
Many of Myanmar's people are subsistence farmers, with about 16 percent of the population undernourished as recently as 2003, according to agriculture ministry statistics.