Bush launches ‘international partnership’ to fight bird flu
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 15: President George Bush on Wednesday launched what he called a ‘new international partnership’ aimed at preventing avian influenza and other new strains of flu from becoming a murderous, global pandemic.
Bird flu “could become become the first pandemic of the 21st century. We must not allow that to happen,” Bush told the UN General Assembly in New York.
“Today I’m announcing a new international partnership on avian and pandemic influenza. The partnership requires countries that face an outbreak to immediately share information and provide samples to the World Health Organization (WHO),” Bush said.
“By requiring transparency, we can respond more rapidly to dangerous outbreaks and stop them on time. Many nations have already joined this partnership. We invite all nations to participate. It’s essential we work together. As we do so, we will fulfil a ... duty to protect our citizens and heal the sick and comfort the afflicted,” he added.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu is harboured by wild migrating birds and poultry flocks. It is also transmissible to humans, killing more than 60 people in Asia, the majority in Vietnam, since 2003.
In its present state, the virus is lethal but is not very contagious for humans, nor can it be easily transmitted from person to person.
MUTATION FEARED: The WHO’s big fear is that H5N1 may mutate, acquiring genes from the human influenza virus that will make it highly infectious as well as lethal.
The potential is there for a massive global killer, swiftly driven by jet travel and cross-border movement. None of the world’s population would have immunity to the novel strain and a vaccine would take time to develop.
The WHO, a UN agency based in Geneva, is in charge of monitoring outbreaks of flu and other infectious diseases, and coordinating the international response to them.
A key aspect of this work is getting samples of influenza virus from doctors out in the field, and unravelling its genetic code to see if the agent has mutated.
These samples are given to a network of high-security labs located in several countries, whose findings are given to the WHO and shared among its members, so that everyone can benefit from the knowledge.
But the WHO has repeatedly raised concern that researchers may be jealously holding on to these samples, possibly in the quest for glory if they unlock secrets about the virus.
Another problem is that authoritarian countries may bar researchers from disclosing or handing over the samples, fearful that this will cause a damaging health scare.
This leaves the WHO with the alternative of raising a media outcry, or prompting political pressure from neighbouring countries, to try to get the samples shared.
Thus sample sharing at present is voluntary, and Bush’s plan — details of which remain sketchy — would appear to make it mandatory.
WHO spokesman Iain Simpson said the agency “absolutely” endorsed Bush’s objectives, but said he awaited further information as to how countries could be required to share the precious samples.
“I think we want the same thing, which is is the rapid sharing of samples,” Simpson said. “However, as with any international agreement, the question is enforcement.”
There have been three documented cases of bad pandemics of flu, one of which was the greatest cause of mortality from disease in the 20th century.
They are, according to strain:
— H1N1: the “Spanish flu” virus which killed as many as 40 million people after World War I. Healthy young people were inexplicably more vulnerable to it than the very young and old, who are the typical victims of a flu epidemic.
— H2N2, or “Asian flu,” which caused up to four million deaths in 1957-8 but faded away a decade later.
— H3N2, or “Hong Kong flu” which caused a pandemic in 1968-9, causing an estimated 750,000 deaths. Variations of this still circulate today. —AFP
