Agri dept asks Congress for P2.5-B anti-bird flu fund
By Benjie Guevarra
Correspondent

A P2.5-BILLION check for an elaborate anti-bird flu plan intended to be started this year hangs fire in Congress even as six Indonesians—all members of one family—died from the bird disease last week, sparking worries that the virus is mutating into a strain that can directly infect people and spark a pandemic that could kill millions of people.
       While Congress is racing against time to pass the long-overdue 2006 General Appropriations Act of P1.05 trillion before its sine die adjournment on June 9, the Department of Agriculture is still lobbying both chambers for a supplemental outlay of P2.5 billion for the DA-led National Avian Influenza Task Force (NAITF).
       In case Congress fails to give the department the extra funds, the task force worries it faces “extreme difficulty” in implementing its anti-bird flu plan, which includes an initial P500 million to compensate poultry growers should their flocks need to be destroyed once infected with the flu virus to prevent the spread of the disease.
       President Arroyo in December ordered agriculture officials to seek the P2.5 billion for the 2006 Avian Influenza Prevention Program (AIPP) and thoroughly prepare for possible entry of the virus after the Philippines remained one of only three countries in the region free from the deadly H5N1 strain of this virus. The other bird flu-free nations are Singapore and Brunei.
       “We are talking to Sen. [Manuel] Villar about this [supplemental budget],” said Agriculture Secretary Domingo Panganiban, who chairs the NAITF. Villar chairs the Senate Committee on Finance.
       When asked if the House had included this P2.5-billion outlay, Panganiban merely said, “We are also talking to [Lakas] Rep. [Joey] Salceda [of Albay] about that.” Salceda chairs the House Committee on Appropriations.
       Panganiban’s statements indicate the only chance left for Congress to approve the DA’s supplemental budget for the AIPP is through the bicameral conference committee.
       The DA’s 2006 budget plan shows that of P2.5 billion, P1.5 billion is for six “Stage 1” programs meant to keep the Philippines bird flu-free this year, and the balance earmarked for “Stage 2” or control and eradication measures in the event prevention of entry fails.
       “Stage 1” funding comprises P344 million for surveillance, P306 million for rapid response, P199 million for quarantine, P158 million for a census database, P230 million for mass information and education on the virus, and P263 million for program management.
       Of the P1 billion for “Stage 2,” P100 million is for surveillance, a similar amount for quarantine and information, and P200 million for program management. The P500 million remaining will be compensation for affected poultry raisers, which Panganiban said he had recommended to be only half of prevailing farmgate price or P35 per bird because of the possible huge amount of poultry that may have to be destroyed.
       The Philippine Association of Broiler Integrators (PABI) had proposed P22 apiece for week-old chicks and P85 for those six weeks old and above.
       According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the H5N1 strain has thus far infected 218 people killing 124 of them in 10 countries. It said the mortality rate is high at over 60 percent. The infection also led to the slaughter of more than 150 million birds. Just recently, the virus had prompted the culling of an estimated 25 million birds in Egypt, and another 300,000 in Azerbaijan.
       While most of the human deaths have been traced by WHO experts to close contact with diseased birds, virologists fret that every additional human infection as well as outbreaks in every new country can led to genetic shuffling that could strengthen the virus to jump easily from animals to humans and then to person-to-person transmissions, leading to a pandemic.
       The latest 2006 fatality was recorded by WHO on May 22, involving a 32-year-old Indonesian who was actually the seventh member of an extended family in North Sumatra infected with H5N1.
       Six other members of this Indonesian family have all died, and while investigators have yet to find evidence, the WHO is not ruling out human-to-human transmissions as it observed on its website that “all confirmed cases in the cluster can be directly linked to close and prolonged exposure to a patient during a phase of severe illness.”
       The most recent flu pandemics took place in 1957 and 1968, killing three million people between them, while the one that erupted in 1918 came from a far deadlier strain that killed an estimated 40 million to 50 million people all over the world in a year’s time.