World has slim chance to stop flu pandemic

[Guest guest]

The

initial outbreak of what could explode into a bird flu pandemic may affect only

a few people, but the world will have just weeks to contain the deadly virus

before it spreads and kills millions.

Chances

of containment are limited because the potentially catastrophic infection may

not be detected until it has already spread to several countries, like the SARS

virus in 2003. Avian flu vaccines developed in advance will have little impact

on the pandemic virus.

It

will take scientists four to six months to develop a vaccine that protects

against the pandemic virus, by which time thousands could have died. There is

little likelihood a vaccine will even reach the country where the pandemic

starts.

That

is the scenario outlined on Tuesday by Dr Hitoshi Oshitani, the man who was on

the frontline in the battle against SARS and now leads the fight against avian

flu in Asia.

" SARS

in retrospect was an easy virus to contain, " said Oshitani, the World

Health Organization's Asian communicable diseases expert.

" The

pandemic virus is much more difficult, maybe impossible, to contain once it

starts, " he told Reuters at a WHO conference in Noumea, capital of the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia. " The geographic spread is

historically unprecedented. "

Oshitani

said nobody knew when a pandemic would occur, it could be within weeks or

years, but all the conditions were in place, save one -- a virus that

transmitted from human to human.

The

contagious H5N1 virus, which has killed 64 people in four Asian countries since

it was first detected in 2003, might not be the one to trigger the pandemic, he

said. Instead a genetically different strain could develop that passes between

humans.

While

bird flu cases continued to spread throughout Asia, with Indonesia this week placed on alert after

reporting four deaths, Oshitani said the winter months of December, January and

February would see an acceleration in cases, and the more human cases the

greater risk that the virus would mutate.

Vietnam, Indonesia and Cambodia were most vulnerable due to the large

domestic poultry populations, he said.

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