Resumo de The World Should Have Know Better

The World should have known better
It could turn out to be ne of the costliest mistakes the
globalcommunity has ever made-and it happened despite
repeatedly warning,indeed pleading,from scientists and
public health experts. From the time bird influenza caused
bythe deadly H5n1 viral strain exploded in South-East Asis
(Towards the end of 2003) the Food and Agricul;ltural
Organisation(FAO),the World Health Organisatin (WHO)hav
drawn attentin to the virus potential to acquire the
ability to infect humans efficientlynd therebyset off an
influential pandemic. The only wayto avert such a crisis
with enormous global ramifications was,they
asserted,swiftlyto rrot out the virus from domestic birds
in the South-East Asian ountries where it had shown up.
All chicken and ducks in and around the location of every
viraloutbreak had ot be slaughtererd. But given that
hundreds of thousands of poor farmers who depended onoultry
for their livelihood needed to ab adequately compensated if
their birds were destroyed,culling on the scale demanded
wwaas beyond the capacityof the developing countries of th
region. ?Poorer countries urgently need financial and
technical assistance,?FAO?s assistant Director-
General,Dr.He Changchui,told donor countries and
organizations at reginal emergencymeeting in Bangkok in
February 2004. A year after the February meeting,a meager
$18million had been donated where,by FAO?s
reckoning,?Hundreds ofmillions of dollars?were needed to
improve the scientific infrastructure inAsian countries as
well as restock flocks and improve farmers? hjusbandry
methods. By July 2005,FAO and OIE appear to have scaled
down their expectations,asserting that their strategyto
control bird fllu in Asia neded $100million to support
surveillance,diagnosis, andother control measures,including
vaccinatin. It isnot clear whether theyget even that sum.
Meanwhile,matters were spiraling out of control. Alarm
bells went o ithe scientific community when thousand of
wild ducks that dies at a lake in western china between
mayand july 2005 were found to have been infected with
H5NL. Bylate july,he virus reached Siberis inRussia and
Kazakhstan;inearlyAugust,Mongolia;and then Turkey and
Romania. With this deadly spread being attributed
tomigratorybirds, it is believed. Countries across
Eurpoe.,Afrioca,West Asia,and South Asia,and some South-
Asian Countries ould be vulnerable It is onlynow,with bird
fluat their doorsteps ,that wealthy European countries hav
world awayhas a direct bearing on their own lives and
livelihood. At last,the foreign ministers of the European
Union hav now roclaimed bird influenza tobe globalthreat
tht demands a coordinated internatinal respnse. One can
onlyhopethis realisatin has not come a little too late.

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