EU starts two-day flu pandemic exercise
By Luke Baker
The Star, 24 Nov 2005

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Public health officials across the 25-nation European Union began a two-day exercise on Wednesday to test their response to a human flu pandemic amid growing global warnings of the risk of such an outbreak. 

The drill involved national authorities in member states, the executive European Commission, the EU's specialised agencies for disease prevention in Stockholm and evaluating medicines in London and the World Health Organisation (WHO). But it did not mobilise real-life health professionals. 

"The exercise aims to test the ability of national and European decision-makers to coordinate their response to an influenza pandemic," European Commission health spokesman Philip Tod said. 

Officials in command centres across Europe were reacting to an imaginary emergency scenario to rehearse their

decision-making, coordination at European level and communication among governments and agencies, he said. 

The exercise began with a message sent out through the EU's early warning and response system. 

It also involved the WHO's Geneva "war room" -- a $5 million state-of-the-art facility for tracking deadly diseases built in a converted cinema that would become a global command centre if the deadly bird flu virus, which has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003, triggered a human pandemic. 

Dr John Simpson, deputy director of emergency preparedness at Britain's Health Protection Agency (HPA), said the exercise has been planned since January, long before the H5N1 avian virus spread from southeast Asia to birds in Turkey, Romania and Croatia, heightening fears of a global pandemic. 

EU health officials insist the risk to humans from the H5N1 virus is extremely low because it cannot spread easily from person to person. To do that, the virus would have to mutate or mix its genetic material with a human influenza virus. 

The Commission and the WHO have been urging member states to stockpile anti-viral drugs as a precaution. 

The World Bank said earlier this month that a flu pandemic lasting a year could cost the global economy up to $800 billion. The United Nations has appointed a special coordinator to devise a strategy to prevent bird flu developing into a human pandemic.