African governments are facing a tough task to translate their promises into consolidated actions in the fight against avian influenza, the lethal disease that has spread into eight countries in the cash- strapped continent within four months.

Idrissa Sow, Avian Influenza official of the World Health Organization African regional office, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview in Cape Town on Thursday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum African summit.

The WHO official said that following the warning of possible bird flu outbreak in the continent late last year, African countries had held a series of regional meetings to work out a cooperation system in order to tackle the spreading of H5N1 virus and finally had the Libreville Declaration approved by 46 African countries.

"The continent are struggling to translate those words on paper into real actions to reverse the rolling out of virus which was first found in Nigeria in February this year and now invaded seven other nations including Egypt, Cameroon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Sudan and Djibouti," said the official.

The expanding of flu virus has renewed fears that any outbreak in any African country would be devastating just imaging the poverty-hit continent's insufficient surveillance, lack of disease control capacity and the close proximity between animals and humans.

"African governments have started with establishing labs handling with H5 virus in Nigeria, Kenya, Senegal, Cameroon and the like, " said Sow, "so far we have one lab in South Africa that can identify H5N1 virus and several low-level labs assigned to do primary analysis."

According to the official, teams of researchers have been sent out and a surveillance system has been set up throughout the continent to track wild birds deaths and collect information for authorities.

Training of technicians and educating of local communities are also undergone in most African countries to raise awareness, mobilize community preparations and avoid unnecessary panic.

The infected countries have been taking measures such as poultry mass slaughtering, farm isolation and export and import bans to have the disease under control.

However, Sow said the poor continent still need to source financial and technology supports from the rest of the world to back the tough fight against bird flu because there is no way for an African country, which has a health budget below US$10 per person a year, to have a perfect plan or provide its population with antiviral drugs.

"WHO and some African countries do have aids from major donors flowing in but it is true the bulk of aid money promised by the developed world last year have not arrived yet," said Sow.

"No country in the world is completely prepared and no country is risk-free," said Sow, "and also no country will feel safe if the rest of the world are suffering from such a pandemic."

Each country in our earth village, whether infected by the virus or not, should take responsibilities and put resources together to drive away the deadly virus that had infected 48 countries and claimed over 100 lives in Asia and Africa, said Sow.

(Xinhua News Agency June 2, 2006)