GENEVA, Nov 7: A three-day council of war on avian influenza opened here on Monday to warnings that a flu pandemic was inevitable, could kill millions and inflict up to 800 billion dollars in economic damage if the world failed to defend itself.
An influenza pandemic, potentially unleashed by a mutation of the H5N1 bird flu virus, ‘is only a matter of time’, World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Lee Jong-Wook said.
“We don’t know when this will happen, but we know it will happen,” Mr Lee said. “(...) If we are unprepared, the next pandemic will cause incalculable human misery... no society will be exempt and no economy will be unscathed.”
Samuel Jutzi, director of the animal production and health division at the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), said ‘the window of opportunity’ remained open for tackling the threat at its source: on the farm.
“The virus has not yet reassorted or mutated,” said Mr Jutzi. “Action is required now. There is no time to lose here.”
The Geneva confab is the highest-level global meeting of doctors, veterinarians and public-health officials since the avian influenza scare erupted in 2003.
It is also the first to gather the World Bank alongside the WHO, the FAO and World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), a Paris-based agency that sets veterinary standards in farm trade.
The conference takes place against a backdrop of growing concern about the failure to roll back the H5N1 bird flu virus in Asia, its spread to Europe and the vulnerability of Africa.
“We have experienced a relentless spread of avian flu,” Mr Lee said sombrely.
He said that 63 deaths, out of 124 known cases of human infection, had been reported to the WHO, 150 million fowl had been slaughtered and the economic cost of the virus was more than 10 billion dollars.
The World Bank’s lead economist for East Asia and the Pacific, Milan Brahmbhatt, said that a major pandemic could clip between two or three per cent off the global economy, inflicting costs of as much as 800 billion dollars after a year.
For rich countries alone, the cost could be 550 billion dollars, the World Bank said separately in a report issued in Geneva.
At present, H5N1 is transmissible from bird to humans who are closely exposed to virus expelled by sickly fowl in their nasal secretions.
But it cannot be easily passed from humans to humans. The fear is that the more the virus spreads, the greater chance it has to mutate, picking up genes from ordinary flu that could make it highly contagious from humans to humans.
This feared mutation could occur if H5N1 is transmitted to a human or a pig that already has been infected by the conventional flu virus.
No one would have any immunity against the new pathogen, which means a pandemic could swiftly spread in the modern era of jet travel and the globalized economy.
The Geneva meeting is looking at national and global preparations for coping with a pandemic.
These include stockpiling drugs and face masks, preparing hospitals for an emergency, setting up emergency transport and food supplies, and advising the public in order to avert a panic.
But a bigger priority is to target the risk of a virus mutation itself, among domestic fowl where H5N1 has holed up.
This means beefing up veterinary surveillance, culling infected poultry, protecting fowl with H5N1 vaccine and reporting cases of infection swiftly and accurately.—AFP
