Health experts on Tuesday warned Asia’s bird flu could still spark a deadly human influenza pandemic and urged all countries to step up readiness.
Vaccines and anti-virals would be in short supply in the early stages of any global flu pandemic, when measures from quarantines to travel warnings could save lives, they added.
Around 100 experts from 40 countries are attending a three-day meeting called by the World Health Organization (WHO) to review global preparedness for a long-predicted flu pandemic.
Bird flu, which spread across eight countries of Asia from late last year, has killed a total of 23 people in Vietnam and Thailand. Some 100 million poultry have died or been culled.
“If the virus acquired full capacity human to human transmission, we should expect a pandemic with huge morbidity and mortality,” Hitoshi Oshitani, head of WHO’s Western Pacific Regional Office, told the opening session.
“In many countries there is no established surveillance system for animals and humans. Unfortunately, most developing countries still don’t have national pandemic plans,” he added.
Pandemic planning
The annual influenza epidemic claims between 500,000 and one million lives worldwide, including some 36,000 in the United States, according to Stohr. Many victims are chronic disease patients whose cases are complicated by influenza and fever.
There has been an average of 27.5 years between pandemics since 1883. The largest, in 1918-1919, claimed 40 to 50 million lives for a mortality rate of 2.2 percent, he said.
But the last such pandemic was in 1968, although there have been 12 outbreaks with that potential since then, including five in the last five years, with bird flu amongst them.
Klaus Stohr, head of WHO’s global influenza program, said that only 36 of the United Nations’ agency’s some 190 members had reported pandemic plans.
Early detection and sound surveillance systems are key for slowing the spread of a pandemic, so as to “buy time” until appropriate new vaccines become available, according to WHO.
“We certainly cannot prevent the global spread of the virus, but we can slow it down,” Stohr said in a speech.
“It has been estimated it could travel around the world in four to eight months,” he added. “The lead time we have may be relatively short especially as travel may hasten the spread.”
Stohr said vaccines were the main defense, but noted it would take months to develop and produce ones to target new strains.
He predicted “severe anti-viral and vaccine shortages,” with supplies virtually “absent” in developing countries.
About 75 percent of vaccine production capacity is currently in Europe, he said. “Without a doubt, countries will look at their own backyard...Countries will not share easily.”