WB: 2 TRILLION USD COST OF BIRD FLU THREAT TO WORLD ECONOMY
Xinhua, China
2006-09-18 09:03:37
BEIJING, Sept. 18 (Xinhuanet) — The outbreak of a severe avian
influenza pandemic could cost the world economy up to 2 trillion
U.S. dollars, the World Bank warned Sunday.
"We estimate this could cost, in fact, certainly over 1 trillion
dollars and perhaps as high as 2 trillion dollars, in the worst case
scenario, so I think the threat, the economic threat, remains real
and remains substantial," said Jim Adams, vice president for East
Asia and the Pacific and head of the bank’s avian flu task force.
Earlier estimates last year of about 800 billion dollars in economic
costs were basically written on the back of an envelope, he said at
a press conference during the International Monetary Fund and World
Bank annual meetings in Singapore.
"But more recent financial modelling had revealed a sharper threat
should the virus mutate and pass easily among people," he also said,
adding a severe pandemic could cost more than 3 percent of the global
economy’s gross national product.
The World Bank has provided advice and financing totaling 150 million
dollars to projects to tackle bird flu in Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Georgia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Laos, Moldavia, Nigeria, Tajikistan,
Turkey and Vietnam.
The international community has pledged to donate 2 billion dollars
to developing countries, and of this, 1.2 billion dollars has been
committed so far.
Asia has been hardest hit, with 127 out the 144 human deaths arising
from bird flu since 2003 occurring in East Asian countries, other
officials of the bank said.