By Alistair Thomson DAKAR, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Global efforts to fight bird flu need $1.2-1.5 billion extra funding over the next two to three years, the World Bank said on Monday, advocating more effective compensation for poultry farmers caught in the front line. In a report prepared for distribution at a conference this week in the West African country of Mali, the Bank outlined funding needs over and above $1.9 billion pledged in January in Beijing, including an extra $466 million for Africa alone. It said the extra costs were "a result of the rapid and sustained increase in animal and human outbreaks both within and across countries throughout Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa". But it said the sums were a fraction of the potential $1.5-$2 trillion costs of a severe human influenza pandemic. The Dec. 6-8 conference in Mali's capital Bamako will review existing programmes to contain bird flu and prepare for any human pandemic, and include a one-day donor conference to raise additional financing to fund them. The report noted the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu strain had killed 76 people already this year, almost matching the death toll from the previous three years. The disease had spread to 55 countries, compared with just 16 at the end of 2005. "The largest increases in needs are in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and North Africa, which reflects both the spread of the disease to those regions and the relatively poor conditions of veterinary and public health services in most of the countries of those regions," it said. Scientists fear the deadly virus could mutate into a version able to pass between people, triggering a global pandemic which could potentially kill tens of millions of people. BETTER COMPENSATION, MONITORING NEEDED Since 2003, avian influenza has killed or forced the culling of an estimated 250 million poultry birds, mainly in Asia, as veterinary officials have scrambled to control the disease. A separate report, also compiled ahead of the Mali conference by the World Bank along with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation and the International Food Policy Research Institute, urged more effective compensation programmes to ensure farmers whose birds get sick tell the authorities. "Early identification of HPAI and the immediate culling of diseased or suspected animals are critical elements of reducing the risk of the disease spreading," said the report, whose lead author is Christopher Delgado of the World Bank's Agriculture and Rural Development Department. "Payment of compensation to farmers whose animals are being culled enhances producer cooperation through better motivation to comply with the disease reporting and culling requirements of disease control packages," it said. Compensation structure has been identified as a key item for discussion in Bamako. The joint report recommended the international community be prepared to fund compensation in countries too poor to pay their own farmers, saying it was clearly in the interests of developed countries' own livestock industries to control disease. It recommended poultry farmers affected by culls receive prompt payment of 75-90 percent of the value of the lost stock, to ensure farmers are prepared to notify authorities, together with strict oversight and controls on poultry movements to prevent farmers from outside a culling zone claiming cash. "Experience suggests that compensation schemes are particularly susceptible to fraud, error and abuse," it said. (Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Maggie Fox in Washington)
