Assistance to Laos for Measures against Avian Influenza

March 23, 2004

The Government of Japan has decided to provide the Government of Laos with equipment for virus control and diagnosis worth 50,000 US dollars to help the country to control avian influenza, within the framework of the Project of Japan-Thailand Technical Cooperation on Animal Disease Control in Thailand and Neighboring Countries, carried out by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). On March 23 (Tue), this decision was officially conveyed to Lao Prime Minister Boungnang Volachit by Mr. Shogo Arai, Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs, on his visit to Laos and Thailand to attend the groundbreaking ceremony of the Second Mekong International Bridge.
The Government of Japan dispatched a JICA long-term expert, stationed in Thailand, to Laos from March 3 (Wed) to 5 (Fri), who confirmed that, among the requests from the Lao Government, equipment for virus control and diagnosis were urgently needed. Based on that report, the Government of Japan has decided to provide these items of equipment together with the technical transfer by the Japanese experts.
The Government of Japan already provided Viet Nam, through JICA, with medicine (100,000 tablets of Tamiflu) worth about 20 million yen (173,000 US dollars, transportation fees included) to support the efforts of the Government of Viet Nam to control avian flu, as part of Japan's urgent assistance for avian flu control in Southeast Asia. It has also extended Grant Assistance for Grassroots Human Security Projects, which amount to about 50,000 US dollars to Cambodia and about 79,000 US dollars to Indonesia (materials and equipment for controlling avian flu). In addition, it has already decided to extend an emergency grant aid which amounts to about 1,610,000 US dollars in total to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to support the efforts related to the prevention of avian flu in Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia and Viet Nam.

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