Officials of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on Monday called for support and aid for less-developed countries to curb the bird flu, which remains a public and animal health threat and is continuing to spread across the region.

There has been report of daily new outbreaks of bird flu cases in the affected countries, FAO's Senior Regional Animal Production and Health Officer Hans Wagner told reporters after a press conference updating the epidemic situation in the region.

"One of the major reasons for the new outbreaks is the lack of finances and logistics to contain the outbreaks, to cull the animals," Wagner said.

He noted that the lack of enough finances and logistics was the major problem for less-developed countries hit by the epidemic to carry out culling and keep animals and human from the reservoir for the disease, which was believed to be wild fowls especially water fowls.

As long as the suspected animals were not culled and the potential spots were not cleared, there would be new outbreaks, the FAO expert said.

He said that the most effective way to contain the disease was immediately testing and culling animals.

However, "the means which are available are very limited," said Wagner, comparing efforts of some countries including Thailand and Vietnam to address the issue as fire fighting.

"You extinguish one fire here and you have fire at other site which starts burning," he said.

But there is neither specific number nor general idea as to how many resources and financial support were needed to help those less-developed countries out of the crisis, he added.

In a bid to provide possible support, FAO has set up an emergent assistance which allows an immediate fund of 400,000 US dollars for countries which were in great need of help.

"So far, four countries have applied for the fund and they might get approval within days and we expect Vietnam is the one that would get approved today or tomorrow," Wagner told Xinhua.

He said most of the fund would be used to purchase protection gears for people who cull the birds, improve surveillance of epidemic and carry out detailed study on specific cases.

Besides Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Pakistan also applied for the emergent fund, said Wagner.

He also said that FAO had been informed that the Asia Development Bank also made soft loans accessible to those countries when dealing with compensation issues.

According to the statistics released by FAO, to date, more than450 million birds have been culled in Asia excluding China, some 0.7 percent of the region's total inventory.

The UN agency pointed out that the disease impact was likely to be most felt by small holders and smaller specialized broiler and layer operations which lack the bio-security measures put in place by larger commercial units.

However, poultry producers in the countries hit by the epidemic were mainly small family-style farmers, who were especially vulnerable against the disease.

Even in Thailand, which holds the potential to accelerate trends towards the industrialization of poultry operation among affected countries, a total of some 2.5 million small chicken farmers were the major players the kingdom's poultry industry.

(Xinhua News Agency February 2, 2004)