By Park Song-wu
Staff Reporter


Pusan _ Leaders, attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, are taking tangible steps to combat avian influenza with the understanding that the virus could damage the economy on a large scale.

But some South Korean scientists are arguing that the global leaders are much too anxious about a disease, which is largely ``exaggerated’’ by Western medical scientists.

APEC’s budget and management committee announced in Pusan (Busan) Monday that it has earmarked $2 million for a special fund, which will be used as ``seed money’’ to prevent the virus from damaging the global economy.

The budget allocation was announced a day after Kim Jong-hoon, South Korea’s ambassador to APEC, said that the 21 leaders were to adopt an agreement on measures to boost preparedness to fight the virus during their two-day summit, which begins Friday.

The special fund will be used for the next three years, starting in 2006, Geoffrey Woodhead, the finance director of the APEC Secretariat, said at a media briefing.

``Experts will decide in which areas the money will be used,’’ he said. ``It is aimed at mitigating harmful effects on the economy. It is our effort to sustain growth of the economy in the member economies.’’

Mario Artaza, who chairs the budget and management committee, indicated that the bird flu issue will resurface next year at a much higher level as Vietnam, one of the Asian countries fighting the disease, hosts the 2006 APEC meeting.

``Vietnam is very much concerned about this issue,’’ Artaza said in the briefing. ``So they will be for sure making this one of the APEC priorities in 2006.’’

But some pharmacologists in South Korea claim that all the threats of bird flu are ``spurious’’ and the world leaders’ efforts to contain the virus are stemming from lobbies of international drug manufacturers.

``Avian flu has developed into a big issue because western drug makers are blackmailing for their own profits,’’ Rym Kyo-hwan, professor of Chungbuk National University’s pharmaceutical college, said in a telephone interview.

He argued that bird flu occurs mostly at breeding farms where chickens and ducks have weak immune systems because they are always confined in a small space.

Rym also claimed that ``there is no efficacy’’ in Tamiflu, an anti-viral drug, which is recently showing skyrocketing sales volume due to rising concerns that the bird flu virus could also affect humans.

``Even after getting anti-flu vaccines, many people will catch cold if they walk on the road without wearing clothes in cold weather,’’ he said. ``I can’t trust such drug. I heard from a news report that it even caused two deaths in Japan.’’

Despite his strong-worded arguments, APEC plans to continue enhancing awareness on bird flu. It will organize a ministerial-level meeting on the virus in the first half of next year and host a symposium on infectious diseases in China also in 2006, South Korean officials said.

Scientists in Vietnam said on Monday that bird flu has mutated into a more dangerous form. An Agriculture Ministry report said the H5N1 virus has now hit 10 of Vietnam’s 64 provinces since returning in early October, according to Reuters.

The wire news service quoted the Ho Chi Minh Pasteur Institute as saying that its decoding of 24 samples of the H5N1 virus taken from poultry and humans showed a significant variation of antigen _ any foreign substance that stimulates the body’s immune system to produce antibodies.

Vietnam’s death toll since the virus first arrived in late 2003 is 42.

Bird flu has killed at least 64 people in Asia since it arrived in 2003 and spread to several countries. Thirteen people are known to have died of bird flu in Thailand, five in Indonesia and four in Cambodia.

im@koreatimes.co.kr