Senior Asian health officials agreed Thursday to set up a regional stockpile of drugs and vaccines that could be flown within hours to any country experiencing an avian influenza outbreak in humans. Health officials from about a dozen countries agreed in principle that a central bank was needed to ensure treatment reaches hotspots quickly, but it was not decided where the stockpile would be based or when countries would begin contributing to it, according to AP. Thai Health Minister Dr. Suchai Charoenratanakul said nations were encouraged to contribute 5 percent of whatever drugs or vaccine their countries have obtained. He said the region would also share database information and technology to try to pre-empt an outbreak. The World Health Organization will help coordinate the stockpile, which will likely exist in regional, sub-regional and global locations. Countries also were encouraged to build a national cache of drugs that would be deployed as the first round of treatment immediately after an outbreak was identified. «The main purpose of the stockpile, based on some modeling work that's been done, would be to deliver a sufficient quantity of drugs to that location and hopefully burn out the virus locally before it spreads beyond that location or, failing that, to have changed the shape of the epidemic curve in such a way that countries have more time to prepare classical outbreak control measures,» said Dr. William L. Aldis, WHO representative in Thailand. Bird flu has ravaged poultry stocks across Asia and killed 61 people in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia since late 2003. International health experts have repeatedly warned the virus could mutate into a form that's easily passed from person to person, sparking a global flu pandemic that could kill millions. So far, most human cases have been traced to direct contact with birds.
