Asia must change age-old farming to stop disease: WHO

By Michael Perry

NOUMEA, New Caledonia (Reuters) – Asia must change age-old
farming practices to reduce contact between people and poultry
to limit bird flu and prevent new animal diseases infecting
humans, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.

In launching a five-year plan to combat emerging diseases
in the Asia-Pacific region, WHO said on average one new disease
had occurred every year for the past 20 years, mainly in Africa
and Asia, and eventually one will become a pandemic.

“Even if you control avian flu, the next one is coming,”
said Dr Shigeru Omi, WHO’s regional director for the Western
Pacific, which stretches from China to Fiji.

“I think it is similar to tsunamis and earthquakes … we
do not know when,” Omi told WHO’s Western Pacific annual
conference in Noumea, capital of New Caledonia in the South
Pacific.

Avian flu was first detected in South Korea in 2003, only
months after SARS was contained, and quickly spread within
months to Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and
China.

The contagious H5N1 strain of the disease has since killed
64 people in four Asian countries and has spread to Russia and
Europe, sparking global fears it could mutate and become a
pandemic killing millions of people.

The latest deaths prompted Indonesia on Wednesday to say an
outbreak in the capital Jakarta could be called an epidemic.

Millions of poultry have been culled since 2003, but bird
flu still spreads.

“In my view this is connected by the differences in the
farming practices. In the West farming practices are well
controlled — ducks, chickens and humans do not mingle
together,” Omi said.

“Unless we address this fast we have to expect more
emerging diseases, particularly zoonoses.” Zoonoses is the
spread of disease from animal to human.

HIGH POPULATIONS, CONTACT

Omi said the spread of avian flu in Asia over the past two
years had correlated with areas of high populations and high
human-to-poultry contact.

“If you look at the poultry density for Asia, southern
China, Vietnam, Cambodia have very dense populations. In the
past two years outbreaks of avian influenza correspond to where
(poultry) population density is very high,” he said.

Cambodia and Vietnam, where poultry is farmed in backyards
and where farmers live in close proximity to chickens and
ducks, have bore the brunt of avian flu deaths.

Omi said Western Europe had equally dense poultry
populations but did not experience the same level of diseases
as Asia.

WHO said 75 percent of infectious diseases in the past 30
years originating from animals (zoonoses), and the Asia-Pacific
was “the epicenter for such epidemics.”

Dengue fever, Japanese encephalitis, leptospirosis, Nipah
virus and drug-resistant malaria are some of the diseases now
entrenched in the region, it said.

Omi said globalization, which had seen an increase in the
movement of goods and people in Asia, and common borders had
also contributed to the spread of diseases, like SARS and bird
flu.

“There is an urgent need to strengthen inter-country and
bioregional collaboration,” he said.

WHO’s “Asia-Pacific Strategy for Emerging Diseases” plan
launched on Wednesday calls for greater co-operation between
Asia-Pacific nations to ensure early detection and rapid
response to emerging diseases.

The plan said that although most countries had surveillance
systems for communicable diseases, they were not capable of
being used as early warning systems.

“Many countries are still vulnerable to future disease
outbreaks and most countries are still not well prepared for
early detection and rapid response to emerging disease,” it
said.