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Bird flu
‘ground zero’ warning |
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MANILA, Fri. --- No one knows exactly when an influenza pandemic will hit, but when it does, ground zero will almost certainly be in Asia, according to one of the world’s leading influenza specialists. “Will we be able to catch it in time to prevent a global catastrophe? I just don’t know. No one does”, said Dr Hitoshi Oshitani, regional adviser on communicable disease surveillance and response with the World Health Organization (WHO) Western Pacific office here. “The window we have to prevent a pandemic is two to three weeks from when the outbreak is first detected”. In an interview, the man who was on the frontline in the WHO’s fight against severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) two years ago says the threat of a pandemic is real. “Yes, some countries are better prepared than others”, he said. “Obviously, when the pandemic hits, the impact will be greatest in the developing countries, especially here in Asia”. “Healthcare systems will be overwhelmed with patients, hospitals will run out of beds and there will be no drugs to fight the virus”. |
“It is almost certain that healthcare workers will be affected as the public health systems of many countries break down”. “Many countries in this part of the world are hard-pressed meeting their own healthcare budgets as it is”. “A pandemic would be catastrophic”. Oshitani said the developed world would suffer, too, but probably not to the same extent. “When the pandemic hits, rich countries will be too busy looking after their own problems to help the poorer countries”, he said. “That is why WHO is developing support mechanisms now to help the poorer countries. It won’t be perfect, but it will be better than not having anything at all”. Will the next pandemic be like the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918-19 which killed an estimated 50 million people? Or will it be like the 1957-58 and 1968-69 outbreaks that still killed millions of people but was not as severe? “No one knows”, Oshitani admitted. “The world has advanced a great deal since 1918 in terms of science, public health infrastructure and surveillance”. |
“But even with all this knowledge, we only have a slim chance at the most of stopping the pandemic”. Oshitani said the H5N1 virus had become particularly virulent in humans. “The challenge we all face today is being able to detect the first outbreak of avian flu among humans… not one or two isolated cases but a cluster of 10 to 20 people in the same area and being able to quarantine the area”. “While we don’t know where the pandemic will start, it is almost certain to be somewhere here in Asia”. “And that’s the hard part. People are more mobile today than they were, say, 30 years ago and I don’t think it is possible to fully restrict the movement of large numbers of people”, he said. --- AFP.
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