As the APEC Ministerial Meeting on Avian and Influenza Pandemics wrapped up here Friday, 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) have committed to fostering cooperation with one another in five key areas.

Under the APEC Action Plan on the Prevention and Response to Avian and Influenza Pandemics adopted at the one-day meeting, the five areas include multi-sectoral cooperation and coordination on avian and pandemic influenza, establishing best practices and common approaches to risk communications, mitigating negative effects of avian influenza (AI) on agriculture and trade, working with the private sector to help ensure continuity of business, trade and essential services, and strengthening regional and international cooperation.

Recognizing the need for a high degree of coordination across veterinary and human health sectors, ministers have agreed to enhance regional capacity for early detection, diagnosis and response by increasing cooperation between animal and health laboratory and surveillance networks, and increase the prompt reporting of avian and human cases and the sharing of biological specimens among bilateral and international veterinary and public health networks.

They have also agreed to integrate risk communications as part of domestic and regional pandemic preparedness planning, contribute to the development of protocols for efficient and transparent information sharing among economies and international organizations, and develop effective partnerships with the media and other key stakeholders for the exchange and dissemination of accurate and timely information that encourages appropriate publichealth and animal husbandry practices.

Since it is now generally accepted that the bird flu virus strain H5N1 has become endemic in fowls in parts of Asia, the ministers have agreed to conduct assessments on the impact of AI mitigation and control and the consequences for agriculture, call for appropriate reform of those commercial poultry production systems with low to minimal bio-security like live bird markets toreduce the incidence of infection, and promote the development of disease-free zones with international standards.

They have also reached broad consensus on supporting the APEC Business Advisory Council's work in industry and business emergency planning and preparedness, and surge that the public, private, and non-governmental sectors work cooperatively in ensuring that the continuity of business and essential services are part of domestic preparedness plans.

Recently international conferences have highlighted the need for coordinated global response to avian and human pandemic influenza. At the international donors conference in Beijing in January, 1.9 billion U.S. dollars was pledged by countries and international agencies to support global avian and pandemic influenza prevention and response efforts.

In a further move, the APEC ministers on May 5 agreed to facilitate collaboration of donor economies and multilateral organizations in supporting implementation of the first four areasof the action plan, especially in the sharing of information and data, share information on planned activities and the results of initiatives undertaken to draw lessons learned from the experiences in addressing the problem, and pursue consistent approaches with international organizations and support existing global coordinating mechanisms.

Some 190 representatives, including seven health and agriculture ministers and 13 deputy ministers from the 21 members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the APEC's Secretariat and five international organizations attended the one-day ministerial meeting.

Since late 2003, the H5N1 virus has affected fowls in 9 of the APEC economies and humans in four economies. While some economies have thus far been successful in containing and mitigating H5N1, the virus has become endemic in birds in other economies.

According to the latest report of the World Health Organization,by the end of April, there have been 204 cases of humans infected with H5N1, 113 of whom died. To date, over 200 million fowls have been culled.