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World Gearing Up For Flu Pandemic

October 11, 2005
A flu pandemic, killing as many as two million Americans, and millions of others world-wide, is not just a remote possibility to be planned for, but an expected outcome, according to world health officials.

Dr. Jong Woo Lee, Director-General of the World Health Organization, says the WHO believes there will be an outbreak of the deadly virus.

U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt, traveling in Asia, stopped short of saying he expects a pandemic in the near term, but indicated he believes it is only a matter of time.

“We have a lot of warning signs that are troubling. The likelihood of it happening is unknown to us but we view this not as a short-term dilemma, but a long-term problem. There will be at some point in the future another pandemic," Leavitt said.

Health officials believe the pandemic, when it occurs, will be triggered by a mutated Avian, or “bird flu” virus. The virus has killed millions of birds, mostly in Asia, since surfacing in 2003. At present the virus is spread only among birds – and in a small number of cases – from bird to human.

When and if the virus mutates so that it can be spread human to human, scientists say a pandemic will result. In 1918, when a similar bird virus mutated and spread to humans, more than 600,000 Americans died. Inexplicably, healthy young adults were the most vulnerable.

Leavitt said the United States is making preparations to deal with a pandemic, believing that an outbreak anywhere in the world would eventually spread to American shores. He said he is urging other nations to make similar preparations.

Europe reported its first case of bird flu over the weekend, resulting in thousands of birds being slaughtered in Romania and Turkey. In the UK, the British people are being asked to be on the lookout for suspicious bird deaths.

The BBC reports the British government has issued a detailed pandemic plan, setting out what it would do to minimize the spread of infection, such as stopping large public gatherings. It reportedly has ordered enough anti-virals to treat a quarter of the population, though the first of the supply won’t be ready until March.

Meanwhile, international cooperation to plan for the disease is apparently not all it should be. Margaret Chan, the WHO’s assistant director-general for communicable diseases, told the Times of London that scientists who joined forces to identify and contain the SARS virus in 2003 are failing to share data on H5N1 influenza in the same way.

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