World Community Steps Up Preparedness for Bird Flu Pandemic

[Guest guest]

World Community Steps Up Preparedness for Bird Flu Pandemic

U.N. health agency says avian influenze threat demands urgent

preparations

By Charlene Porter

Washington File Staff Writer

Washington – The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a plan to

guide its 192 member states on how they should prepare for the

possibility of a global avian influenza pandemic.

Watching and waiting for human outbreaks of the disease, and knowing

how to prevent their spread, is considered the best strategy for

heading off a global pandemic.

Recommended actions were put forth by WHO this week in a report

titled Responding to the Avian Infuenza Pandemic Threat, which guides

member states on how to reduce opportunities for human infection and

strengthen their early warning systems.

Speaking to Asian health ministers at a meeting in Sri Lanka

September 5, WHO General Director Lee Jong-wook likened the prospect

of such a pandemic as a disaster on the scale of Hurricane Katrina in

the United States or the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004.

" We don't know when it will strike, or how hard it will hit, " Lee

said. " But we have the chance to put our action plan into place to

save thousands, maybe millions, of lives. "

The ongoing outbreak of a virulent strain of bird flu in Asia could

form the seed for a global pandemic, health officials warn. This

strain of avian influenza has been ravaging poultry flocks in

Southeast Asia since December 2003, causing the deaths of an

estimated 150 million birds. (See related article.)

In 112 verified cases, the virus has infected humans too, causing 57

deaths. In virtually all of these cases, people have become sick

through direct contact with poultry. The virus could mutate, however,

and develop into a form more easily transmitted from person to

person. If that happens, health officials warn that serious disease

could pass quickly and furiously with little human immunity to block

the spread of the pathogen.

WHO's report lists actions to contain or delay spread of the disease

at the source if a pandemic virus emerges. If the disease breaks out

and begins to spread internationally, the plan suggests ways to

reduce sickness, death and social disruption.

Experts say history itself is another factor contributing to the

prospect of a wide-scale deadly pandemic such as that in 1918, which

killed an estimated 20 million people or more. Viruses change and

reorganize constantly, but scientists believe the ones most deadly to

humans emerge in a cyclical pattern. Other pandemics occurred in

1957, 1968 and 1977; now the world is overdue, according to many

experts.

Unlike pandemics of the past, however, the world now has advance

warning and the WHO report finds " an unprecedented opportunity for

international intervention aimed at delaying the emergence of a

pandemic virus or forestalling its international spread. "

The full text of Responding to the Avian Infuenza Pandemic Threat

(PDF, 22 pages) is available on WHO's Web site.

http://www.iwar.org.uk/news-archive/2005/09-09.htm