Bird vaccination is needed to bring southeast Asia's epidemic of chicken flu under control, experts have concluded. On 5 February the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) advised governments in affected areas that mass culling of birds (see Nature 427, 472-473; 2004) is failing to halt the disease and that vaccination of targeted poultry flocks is required as well. The advice followed an emergency meeting on vaccination strategies held by the FAO and other international bodies in Rome on 3-4 February. FAO officials are now working out the cost of vaccination, which would involve trained personnel administering what could be hundreds of millions of shots. They will present a package of control plans, which include different levels of vaccination, at a regional FAO meeting in Bangkok later this month. The cost will vary enormously between commercial farms and remote villages, says Joseph Domenech, head of the FAO's animal health service―and it is unclear who will pay.
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