US Senate approves US$8b to fight avian flu

WASHINGTON - The US Senate, increasingly concerned with the possibility of a deadly influenza pandemic, approved nearly US$8 billion ($11.46 billion) to help the government stockpile vaccines and other drugs to fight the disease.

Avian flu, which is widespread among flocks of poultry in Asia and has spread west into Eastern Europe, has only infected about 120 people, killing half of them. The deaths were in Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia.

But scientists fear that if the virus mutates in a way that humans could easily pass it among themselves, millions of people would succumb.

"What this pandemic could do to us as a people is even more threatening than what a few terrorists could do, even a few terrorists with a nuclear device," said Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who led the drive for the emergency funds.

The measure was attached to a fiscal 2006 funding bill for the Department of Health and Human Services and other federal agencies that the Senate was expected to approve by week's end. It is not yet clear whether the House of Representatives would provide its needed concurrence.

The measure would provide US$3.3 billion to stockpile avian flu vaccines, or about 120 million doses, as they are created, and about US$3 billion for anti-viral drugs to serve half of the American population of nearly 300 million.

In a compromise with Senate Republicans, the Bush administration would have flexibility in how the money would be spent.

Some Republicans have been holding off on legislation to fund avian flu efforts pending the release of a long-delayed administration plan for pandemic preparedness.

But Democrats argued that this health-care spending measure was the final appropriations bill being considered by the Senate this year and possibly the last opportunity to approve emergency funds before Congress near year's end.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican overseeing the health-care spending bill, agreed saying, "The money would not be present" in an emergency unless Congress approved it promptly.

The funds also could be used to expand hospitals' ability to handle a likely surge in patients and global surveillance for human outbreaks of the highly contagious disease.

The Senate debate took on a personal tone when 87-year-old Senator Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, noted that his mother died in the 1918-1919 "Spanish flu" epidemic, when an estimated 25 million to 50 million died worldwide. Scientists fear an avian flu outbreak could be even more lethal.

Illinois Democratic Senator Barack Obama warned of "economic devastation" in the United States, on top of the loss of lives, if the avian flu raged uncontrolled.

He noted that an outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003 brought more than US$40 billion in economic loses to the Asia-Pacific region in just six months.

Supporters of the legislation have acknowledged that it would accomplish little if the avian flu were to hit the human population in coming months before drugs were stockpiled.

Last month, the Senate approved about US$4 billion in funds, mostly for buying anti-viral drugs. The measure passed on Thursday would replace that amendment.

- REUTERS