Bird flu pandemic could cost 2 trillion dollars
Pastor Dale Morgan
Sunday September 17, 4:30 PM Reuters
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Bird flu pandemic could cost 2 trillion dollars *
By David Fogarty
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - A severe bird flu pandemic among humans could cost
the global economy up to $2 trillion (about 1 trillion pounds), the
World Bank said on Sunday, sharply raising earlier estimates.
The comments came as a senior World Health Organisation official said
the threat from the H5N1 avian flu virus was just as real today as it
was six months ago, even if the headlines were not as scary.
Jim Adams, vice-president for East Asia and the Pacific and head of the
Bank's avian flu taskforce, said a severe pandemic could cost more than
three percent of the global economy's gross national product.
"We estimate this could cost certainly over $1 trillion and perhaps as
high as $2 trillion in a worst-case scenario. So the threat, the
economic threat, remains real and substantial," he told reporters at the
annual IMF-World Bank meetings in Singapore.
He said earlier estimates last year of about $800 billion in economic
costs were basically written on the back of an envelope. But more recent
financial modelling had revealed a sharper threat should the virus
mutate and pass easily among people.
He said it was crucial to develop strong anti-bird flu programmes around
the world to strengthen health and veterinarian services as well as
improve public education and transparency.
"We have been working in virtually all of the countries, developing
countries, that have been affected by an avian flu outbreak, providing
advice and financing in the development of projects to tackle the
challenge," he said.
Financing totalling about $150 million had been committed for projects
in 11 countries, ranging from Albania to Laos and Turkey to tackle the
disease, which has killed at least 144 people since it re-emerged in
Asia in 2003.
An additional $15 million in grant aid had also been finalised for
cash-strapped Indonesia, Adams said, as part of a wider package to help
that country control the virus. Bird flu has killed nearly 50 people in
Indonesia, the world's highest national toll, and the virus is endemic
in poultry in most provinces of the southeast Asian nation.
RISKS REMAIN
David Nabarro, the WHO's avian flu coordinator, said one only had to
look at the resurgence of bird flu in Thailand and Laos in past months
to understand the risks posed by H5N1.
"The only difference between now and six months ago is not that the
problem doesn't exist, it is perhaps headline writers have got used to
it," he told reporters when asked if bird flu had turned into the Y2K of
the viral world.
Fears of mass computer breakdowns due to glitches associated with Y2K,
the turn of the millennium in 2000, proved unfounded.
Nabarro expressed satisfaction at the way governments around the world
had responded to bird flu and that country-specific programmes were well
under way in most, creating confidence for donors that their money would
be well spent.
At a donors' conference in Beijing in January, nearly $1.9 billion was
pledged. So far about $1.2 billion had been committed for projects and
over $300 million disbursed as loans or grants.
Nabarro agreed there was a shortage of funds but it was crucial to focus
on the fact that "we now have got in countries good ways of spending
resources so we get results".
(Editing by John Chalmers: World Desk Singapore +65 6870 3815)