African nations vowed on Friday in Kigali to step up their preparations against bird flu that had triggered a global panic and predicted to reach the impoverished continent by December.

"AU (African Union) member countries should find appropriate means to address the eventual introduction of the disease into the continent," said Rwandan Agriculture Minister Anastase Murekezi, also chairman of the 7th African Union Conference of Ministers Responsible for Animal Resources held on Friday in Kigali, Rwanda's capital.

The solution report of the conference said ministers and experts from the 39 African countries, though lack of financial resources and research equipment, had agreed to forge an integrated prevention strategy to guard a possible outbreak of the highly pathogenic avian influenza which has claimed over 60 lives in Asia.

The strategy includes raising awareness among citizens, strengthening customs quarantine, wild birds surveillance and vaccine stockpile.

The Food and Agriculture organization of UN warned that upcoming migration of wild birds are likely to carry the virus into the continent from Europe where the H5N1 strain had been found among fowls in the past three weeks.

The international community worried that the cash-strapped continent, with insufficient surveillance, lack of disease control capacity and the close proximity between animals and humans, had created an ideal breeding ground for the H5N1 strain and an outbreak could be devastating.

Ministers said most African countries already had precaution means in place. Ghana, Ethiopia and Kenya had established task force or special committee to tackle the issue and Nigeria, Tanzania had ordered their experts to collect bird samples for further analysis.

African nations also have banned poultry imports from virus- infected areas.

However, Agriculture ministers and experts worried that the approaching danger of avian influenza had set a great social and economic burden on poor Africans.

A report prepared by Karim Tounkara, an animal expert with African Union, estimated that the basic precaution against bird flu would cost the whole continent at least 30 million US dollars given that every African country set aside at least 520,000 US dollars for national awareness, emergency preparations and epidemic surveillance.

Ugandan, Kenyan and Ethiopian ministers said their local experts had fanned out to collect samples from migration flocks for further laboratory analysis, but with their average per capital health expenditure below 10 US dollars, these nations are short of trained veterinarians and lack labs to carry out bird flu tests.

Source: Xinhua