Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK, Mar 18 2006 (IPS) – After years of oppression and secretive rule, Burma s generals appear to have come up against resistance from an unlikely opponent-avian flu virus.
This week s confirmation by the junta, that the South-east Asian nation is the latest to be hit by the deadly H5N1 virus, marked a dramatic departure from the insularity of a regime that has ruled the country with an iron grip since the 1962 military coup.
A request by the junta for assistance from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is winning early praise from the U.N. agency. We are pleased that the government of Myanmar (the name given to Burma by the junta) reported the outbreak to FAO and has sought verification of the virus from labs outside the country, Laurence Gleeson, senior animal health officer at the FAO s Asia-Pacific regional office in Bangkok, told IPS.
Part of this new openness also includes Rangoon permitting an FAO animal health expert to visit the areas where the avian flu cases in the poultry population were detected, around the town of Mandalay, some 700 km north of Rangoon, and the neighbouring Sagaing divison.
We are looking for epidemiological traces of the virus, where it came from and the controls that need to be in place to contain its spread, added Gleeson, who also confirmed that tests conducted Thursday had proved that Burma had the lethal H5N1 virus..
Early studies conducted by the FAO have documented a 40 percent mortality rate, some 120 dead birds, in a chicken farm that had 280 birds in the Pyigyidagun township in Mandalay. Two farms adjacent to it, one of which has 450 chickens, had not been affected.
In the Sagaing division, according to the FAO, an estimated 10 percent of the poultry population in three chicken farms that had a total of 12,000 birds had died.
But it was only on Thursday that Burma s citizens learnt of the lethal virus hitting their backyards after it had been kept under a cloak of secrecy for four days. The state-run media revealed fairly candid accounts of the damage that had been caused over 5,000 birds had been culled and a ban was in place on the sale of chickens and poultry products in the Mandalay area. An appeal was also made for the public to report any more bird flu outbreaks.
The response by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the military regime is officially known, to the presence of the dead chickens is already being viewed by analysts in the region as an occasion for Rangoon to re-engage with its neighbours and the international community.
Bird flu represents a unique problem and calls for unique solutions that should prompt the Burmese government to turn for help to the international community, Kavi Chongkittavorn, a senior editor and columnist on regional affairs at The Nation, an English-language daily in Thailand, told IPS. Burma could earn some respect by being open, transparent and trusting outside help on this issue.
Others say that openness from Burma is crucial for its neighbours that have been hit by bird flu or are concerned about a domestic outbreak to take preventive action. Thailand, Burma s southern neighbour, tops this list, since 14 people have died due to the virus and tens of thousands of chickens have been culled or died since bird flu was first reported in early 2004.
Other South-east Asian nations that have been affected include Vietnam, where 42 people have been killed, Indonesia, where there have been 22 deaths, and Cambodia, where four people have died. China, Burma s giant neighbour to the east, has reported four human fatalities from bird flu since 2005.
Bird flu, which has led to some 150 million chickens and ducks being culled and dying from the virus across Asia, where it was first detected in the winter of 2003, has now spread to Russia, Central Asia, parts of Europe and Africa.
Public health officials fear that the lethal flu, which has killed over 100 people across the world, has the characteristics of a virus that could mutate into one that could be easily passed between humans, resulting in a pandemic that could kill millions of people.
Till this week s response to bird flu, the Burmese regime had established a healthy record of contempt for international assistance and regional collaboration to help it deal with a host of problems that both threatened the lives of its people and regional stability.
In August last year, the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an independent international body set up to finance grassroots efforts to combat the three pandemics, quit working in the country following severe travel restrictions placed on it by Rangoon. Other international humanitarian agencies aiding civilians in Burma were also subject to similar travel bans, virtually making it impossible for them to help the country s needy.
At the time, Burma was estimated to have between 170,000 to 620,000 people living with HIV. The annual infection rate among its 50 million population was 1.3 percent, making it the second highest in South-east Asia, according to the U.N. agency for AIDS.
Till late 2003, Burma, which is the main source of all strains of HIV that have spread across Asia, according to the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, refused to acknowledge it had an AIDS crisis, keeping the story off all the country s media.
The spread of tuberculosis (TB) within Burma and beyond its borders is also worrying public health officials in neighbouring countries, since 97,000 new cases of TB are reported in Burma every year, making it one among the world s 22 high burden countries for the killer disease. A sizeable number of them are multi-drug resistant TB cases.
The Burmese regime cannot afford to repeat the same mistakes it did with the Global Fund with bird flu, says Kavi. Its initial response suggests it is looking at this problem differently.
