Officials from Israel’s Veterinary Service were meeting at the Allenby Bridge border crossing with their Jordanian counterparts on Thursday morning to coordinate measures against bird flu. It was not clear whether officials from the Palestinian Authority’s veterinary service also attended the meeting. The meeting was organized at the request of the Jordanians, who want to find out what steps Israel is taking to prepare for a possible outbreak and spread to humans of the virus. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said that Israel and Jordan were trying to forge plans for a joint effort against the flu, since it is considered likely to spread to the Middle East in the near future. Israel would also be happy to cooperate with other countries on this issue, he said. Several Arab newspapers reported on Wednesday that Israeli officials would also meet on the issue with counterparts from other Arab states, including Syria and Iraq. Israeli officials denied the reports. They did say, however, that since Jordan was coordinating its moves with both Israel and with its Arab neighbors, there would be indirect coordination between Israel and other Arab states. However, they said, there will be no direct contacts. Preparations began in 2003 The Israeli delegation at Thursday’s meeting will be headed by Dr. Moshe Haimovich, director of the Agriculture Ministry’s Veterinary Service, and Dr. Shimon Pokomonsky, who heads the service’s avian section. Pokomonsky said that the ministry had made preparations to cope with bird flu as far back as 2003, when the virus first broke out in southeast Asia, and that over the past few months, it has updated its data and reexamined its diagnostic methods. Israel is now prepared should the virus spread here, he said. Pokomonsky said that every suspect bird is examined in one of the Veterinary Service’s four regional laboratories. The test gives initial results within a day and a definitive diagnosis in four to five days. „The number of labs and the existing staff are sufficient to meet our requirements, even if and when the problem of bird flu arises,” he said. Health Ministry Director General Avi Yisraeli, however, said that it was not a question of „if” only of „when.” Speaking at a media conference on Wednesday, Yisraeli said that a local outbreak of bird flu was „only a matter of time, and likely to happen soon, because of migrating birds that are liable to carry the disease from Turkey, Greece or Romania.” The disease, he stressed, is not a danger to the public, since it can only be caught directly from a live bird, and so cannot be contracted by eating cooked fowl. The main worry is the economic damage that the flu could wreak on Israel’s poultry industry, he said. Prof. Manfred Green, head of the Israel Center for Disease Control in the Health Ministry, said that people who rush to purchase the flu medicine Tamiflu to protect themselves against bird flu were „throwing money in the garbage.” Moreover, he said, it is not even clear that Tamiflu is effective against bird flu, and even if it is, widespread usage could enable the virus to develop resistance to the medicine. Health ministry to ask for NIS 200 million Unlike the general public, farmers and veterinary personnel who work directly with infected birds are vulnerable to the disease. Israel has therefore purchased approximately 420,000 doses of flu medicine, at a cost of NIS 44 million, enough to treat about 6 percent of the population. At the next cabinet meeting, however, the Health Ministry plans to ask for an additional NIS 200 million to buy enough medicine to treat a quarter of the population, as most western European states plan to do. Although the current strain of bird flu is not dangerous to humans, the expectation is that such a strain will eventually appear though possibly not for years. If there is a local outbreak of the flu, the Agriculture Ministry will order all birds in the vicinity of the outbreak destroyed, in an attempt to prevent the disease from spreading. Hungary says it finds a vaccine Meanwhile, officials in Hungary said on Wednesday that preliminary experiments with a vaccine for this strain of bird flu, known as H5N1, indicate that the treatment works. Health Minister Jenoe Racz said that he and dozens of others were inoculated three weeks ago, and tests showed that antibodies to the virus had appeared in their blood. „The results are preliminary, but I can say with 99.9 percent certainty that the vaccine works,” he said in Budapest. The World Health Organization said that it was unaware of the details of the Hungarian findings and was unable to comment on their validity or on whether the vaccine even if it works would be viable. Scientists in the U.S. have already reported positive results from tests with their own H5N1 vaccine, but so far have been unable to make the vaccine a practical option, because it uses too much of a scarce ingredient and requires two doses to be effective. Asians take measures to contain outbreaks as death toll rises Authorities in Taiwan announced Thursday morning they have identified the avian flu virus in that country, despite the fact that the Taiwanese coast guard stopped a poultry shipping container arriving from Panama for inspection. In the Inner Mongolia region of China, meanwhile, more than 91,000 birds were destroyed, after some 2,600 ducks and chickens died of the virus. A 48-year-old Western Thailand man died at the beginning of the week after cooking and eating an infected chicken, the Thai prime minister announced Thursday. His death brings the Thai death toll to 13 and the number of deaths in Asia to 60. Of these, 41 have been in Vietnam. Russians, Americans prepare Russian authorities have begun to destroy fowl in chicken houses in the rural area south of Moscow, after cases of avian flu were discovered and 300 of the poultry died of the disease. Promising better access to drugs designed to treat the outbreak, American Democratic Senator Charles Schumer announced Wednesday he „is giving [drug company] Roche one month to give up its exclusive rights to manufacture” the avian flu medication. „If they don’t, I’ll introduce legislation to correct the matter,” he vowed.
BPI-info
BPI-info