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Bird flu to 'kill world travel'
30/10/2005 09:02 - (SA)
Rod McGuirk
Canberra - International air travel would virtually stop if bird flu triggered a lethal human pandemic in the Asia-Pacific region, Australia's health minister said on Sunday, as Chinese media reported plummeting poultry sales in Beijing and Shanghai.
Bird-flu prevention teams were fanning out across China's capital to ensure no wild birds were being sold at the city's markets, the Beijing News newspaper reported Sunday, after 182 wild birds were found at one market on sale against regulations.
Beijing has banned the sale of wild birds, since it cannot guarantee they haven't come from bird-flu infected areas.
Vietnam reported Saturday that two people had died after displaying flu-like symptoms in the central Quang Binh province in the past week but no diagnosis could be made because blood samples were not taken before they were buried.
Australia's health minister Tony Abbott did not directly respond to questions on whether Australia would expel foreigners, close its ports or accept "flu refugees" in the event of a pandemic breaking out in neighbouring Indonesia.
"If there is a pandemic, international travel will almost cease I suspect for a significant period of time," Abbott told Ten Network television. "Regardless of what border controls countries might put on, there will be very few people who'll be wanting to travel."
He said the government would help Australians wanting to return home if there was a global pandemic.
Australia will host an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum of health and disaster officials in the east coast city of Brisbane Monday to coordinate the international response to a human pandemic that could result from the virulent H5N1 strain of the bird flu mutating into a form easily transmitted between humans.
H5N1 has already killed at least 62 people after jumping from sick birds as well as millions of poultry is Asia since 2003.
Abbott said Australia had already spent Aus$170m on safeguarding its population of 20 million.
Australia's bird flu strategy has come under criticism from some experts who say Canberra plans to waste most of its stockpile of 4 million courses of anti-viral drugs by using it as preventative medication for essential workers instead of saving it for those who contract the disease.
Abbott justified the strategy, saying the anti-virals Tamiflu and Relenza "will provide effective prevention but we are by no means certain that they will be a cure if you're already symptomatic."
- SAPA
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