‘No society will escape deadly flu pandemic’

A DEADLY new global pandemic of human influenza is inevitable and suffering will be “incalculable” unless the world is ready, the chief of the UN health agency said yesterday.

The World Bank put the possible economic cost at a minimum of €675 billion.

"We have been experiencing a relentless spread of avian flu" among migratory birds and domestic poultry, Lee Jong-wook, director- general of the World Health Organisation, told a meeting of 600 health experts and planners, the first attempt to devise a global strategy in case the bird flu virus changes to transmit easily between humans.

Lee stressed that a human flu pandemic has yet to begin anywhere in the world. "However, the signs are clear that it is coming," he said, noting that a changed avian flu virus caused the deadly "Spanish" flu pandemic that killed tens of millions of people in 1918/19.

Already the virulent H5N1 strain of avian flu, which appeared in Hong Kong in 1997, is killing birds in 15 countries of Europe and Asia, he said.

"This is the time for every country to prepare their national action plan and act on it," Lee said. "If we are unprepared, the next pandemic will cause incalculable human misery both directly from the loss of human life and indirectly through its widespread impact on security. No society will be exempt. No economy would be left unscathed."

Estimates of the number of people who would die in a new pandemic have varied widely between two million and €360m, but WHO says a reasonable maximum would be €7.4m.

A senior World Bank economist said a pandemic could cause world gross domestic product to drop by 2% or more. That would amount to about €675 billion over the course of a year, said Milan Brahmbhatt.

Although bird flu has recurred over the years, scientists have been watching H5N1 since its impact on humans started to be noticed. In early 2004 officials announced that three people an adult and two children had died from the disease in Vietnam.

Since then, more than 120 people, most of whom were in close contact with poultry, have come down with the disease in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia, WHO says. More than half of the people infected have died.

More than 150 million chickens and other poultry have died or been culled, but that has not halted the spread of the disease to birds in central Asia, Russia and eastern Europe.

Samuel Jutzi of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation said the cost to the economies of the affected countries from the poultry losses is estimated above €10 billion.

Around the world, governments have been making plans in case the virus mutates into one that easily transmits among people. Developing a vaccine is hampered because it is unknown exactly what form the deadly virus would take, so many governments are stocking up on antiviral drugs that work against regular flu and are believed to be the best immediate weapon to confront a pandemic until a vaccine can be produced.