Health Minister attends bird flu meet in Jakarta

Minister of Health Pehin Orang Kaya Indera Pahlawan Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Suyoi attended a high level meeting on 'Responsible Practices For Sharing Avian Influenza Viruses and Resulting Benefits' in Jakarta on March 27 and 28.

According to a press release, the meeting aimed at assessing the level of global threat and risk response approaches for avian influenza.

It focused on developing more operational approaches for avian influenza viruses as passed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) 120th Executive Board (EB) meeting in January this year, as well as identifying a set of broad-based sustainable options and solutions to increase the availability of pandemic influenza vaccine for developing countries as equally and economically as possible.

The keynote address was delivered by President of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Prior to the high level meeting, a high level technical meeting was held to create a broader understanding by all participants of the existing global system for influenza risk assessment and risk response. This includes the links between various activities and inequities confronting developing countries.

It was also intended as a means to identify feasible options for improving the operational aspects of virus and genetic sequence data sharing, expanding vaccine production, and increasing the equitable access of developing countries to pandemic influenza vaccine.

According to WHO in a January 2007 report, Indonesia has had 63 deaths from avian influenza out of the 81 confirmed cases.

Avian influenza (H5N1 virus) began to break out in Asia around mid 2003 but was still largely undetected. It was not until two tigers and two leopards died unexpectedly in a zoo in Thailand that led to the finding that they were fed with chickens infected with the H5N1 virus.

source:www.brunei-online.com