Taiwan's bantam menace

TAIPEI - The 730 missiles Communist China has pointed at Taiwan may prove less lethal than another arsenal lined up against this small island fighting a lonely identity battle.

"The birds are like terrorists!" says Parris Chang, a high ranking member of the National Security Council. "They carry this deadly threat and we have to watch out."

The NSC Deputy Secretary-General - a long-time senior member of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party - has mobilised Taipei's Government agencies as bird flu spreads in South-East Asia.

Travellers arriving at Taipei airport are given a 10-step programme to monitor their temperature, poultry flocks are being monitored and a huge stadium has been set aside for quarantine purposes.

Chang's worry is that a pandemic equally as deadly as the 1918 influenza outbreak could take off if Asia Pacific leaders meeting this week in Busan fail to act decisively. Leaked drafts of the Apec leaders' final communique suggest strong action will be recommended to combat a potential avian flu pandemic.

But the real test of their leadership will be the commitment to rise above politics and put their economies and public rather than private-sector interests first if a crisis emerges.

Taiwan's scientists have already broken ranks with Western intellectual property norms and basically copied Tamiflu - the anti-viral drug which Governments hope can stop the spread of bird flu among humans.

Now Taipei wants Apec leaders to stop their usual kow-towing to China's loud megaphone to ensure Taiwan's people are no longer excluded from vital global fora - such as the World Health Organisation - which is likely to act as an umbrella organisation for fighting the bird flu virus.

On Monday Taiwan confirmed the H7N3 bird flu strain had been found in migratory birds' excretory waste in a Tainan wetland. Authorities maintain an earlier case - where about 1000 smuggled birds tested positive for the H5N1 virus (which is the focus of international anxiety) were uncovered in a Chinese container on a Panama registered boat - was contained when the exotic birds were destroyed .

"First of all we want to block the rapid spread of this disease. The quarantine at the border is to stop the disease coming across from South-east Asia or China. Then [we will] mobilise our communities," said Chang.

He has reason to be worried. More than 80 Taiwanese died when Sars swept through Asia. The bird flu virus is considered much more deadly than Sars, killing about 50 per cent of those who become infected.

Taiwan is in the pathway of birds migrating from China - particularly Northern Mongolia. It's also a major international transportation hub with thousands of travellers going through its airports each day.

But Taiwan was the first country to start stockpiling Tamiflu and has already donated substantial doses to stricken Vietnam.

The National Health Research Institute began pandemic preparations in May. A taskforce was formed, and medical investigators sent to Hong King, Vietnam and Thailand to obtain first-hand reports.

The Government-owned institute then proposed a project to health officials called the "Synthetic rehearsal of Tamiflu production" - basically a plan to mirror the laboratory process by which oseltamir (the generic term for the drug) is made. By mid-September the first lot had been produced.

Health officials estimate some 500,000 of Taiwan's 23 million people could be affected if bird flu sweeps the island - with potential for 14,000 deaths in spite of precautions.

The institute is now investigating processes to maximise Tamiflu production if Taipei cannot obtain sufficient anti-viral doses on the open market. For free-market preaching Taiwan the decision to mirror Roche's intellectual property might look hypocritical. This, after all is a country which refuses to let its entrepreneurs take vital intellectual know-how across the Taiwan Straits to their mainland factories in case the PRC Chinese steal their secrets.

"It's life or patents," institute president Cheng-en Wun told the Herald. "We value intellectual property but we have chosen life."

Roche - which was in talks with the institute in Taipei last week - is evaluating an official request to make Tamiflu under licence. But so far it has resisted Taiwan's pleas. A Taiwanese official said: "At this point we don't plan to come out and produce it - we will stop there and wait for a national emergency."

Taiwan is the only "country" to take Roche on by copying the drug.

But it is a debate that Apec leaders - many of whose countries are already vulnerable - will find difficult to stand apart from. One creative option doing the rounds suggests Governments should issue compulsory licences to overcome patent barriers which currently stand in the way of their local firms manufacturing generic versions of anti-viral drugs. Companies from stronger Apec economies could export any surplus to countries which are unable to manufacture their own drugs, such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Such a mechanism would ensure patent owners don't miss out on drug revenues as they will be remunerated from licence fees.

More worrying from Taiwan's perspective is the fact that despite its Apec membership it was excluded from a meeting President Bush convened with other Asia Pacific member nations on bird flu. It is still not allowed to formally participate in WHO - or access the UN organisation's Tamiflu stockpile - but did gain observer status at a Geneva meeting last week. Taiwanese officials say similar WHO practices meant many more youngsters died when the organisation failed to come to the party when Sars struck.

"They did not send experts until there was a major hospital outbreak here in Taipei and were instructed not to be in contact with our officials," said a health spokesman.

Despite Taiwan's Apec membership its President has not been welcome at leaders' meetings for some years because of China's objection that his presence would contravene the One China policy.

Taiwan hopes that Hsin-I Lin - the special envoy that President Chen Shui-Bian has deputised to take his place in Busan this week - will get a word in Chinese President Hu Jintao's ear on the issue.

For his part Lin - who will promote Taiwan's role in bridging the digital divide - was choosing his words carefully ahead of the meeting. But he will press Taiwan's case hard in private bilateral meetings.

Joseph Wu, who heads the Mainland Affairs Council, is angry that Taiwan has to fight for its admittance to Apec each year against China's might and beg diplomatic support from countries such as Australia and New Zealand. "This is very unfair to Taiwan - we are another democracy."

Wu worries that China will escalate cross straits tension at a time when Taiwan's attention is taken with fighting the potential flu outbreak.

But both he and NSC chief Chang say no country in the Asia pacific is immune. Watch for early next year they say.

"It's not just migration time it's also the time when a lot of people are coming back from China for the Chinese lunar year celebrations," said Chang.

"We proposed a taskforce on this two years ago but no one listened - it might be too late now."

* Fran O'Sullivan joined other Apec journalists in Taipei as a guest of the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Office.