World Bank official downplays effects of bird flu, BSE in Southeast Asia.

(From BBC Monitoring International Reports)

news agency Kyodo

Tokyo, 23 January: The economies of Southeast Asia will not be hit as hard by the bird flu outbreak in Asia or mad cow disease in the United States as they were by the SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] outbreak last year, a World Bank official said Friday [23 January]. "The entire region is much more prepared to deal with this kind of situation than it was a year ago," Jemal-ud-din Kassum, vice-president for the East Asia and Pacific Region of the World Bank, told reporters in Tokyo. Though the bank currently does not have specific measures to tackle the arising problems, it is monitoring …