Deadly flu pandemic imminent

THE world is closer to the next flu pandemic “than we have ever been before” and it may kill up to seven million people, a World Health Organisation expert predicted today.

Pandemics usually occur every 20 to 30 years when the genetic makeup of a flu strain changes so dramatically that people have little or no immunity built up.

Klaus Stohr of the WHO Global Influenza Programme said at a Bangkok conference, “There is no doubt there will be another pandemic.”

“During the last 36 years, there has been none, and there is a conclusion now that we are closer to the next pandemic than we have ever been before. There is no reason to believe that we are going to be spared.”

He said the bird flu virus which has killed 32 people in Thailand and Vietnam and millions of chickens across Asia this year “is certainly the most likely one that will cause the next pandemic”.

Stohr said the virus would cause “a public health emergency”, and estimated it would cause two million to seven million deaths and make billions of people ill.

There were three pandemics in the 20th century; all spread worldwide within a year. The worst was the Spanish flu in 1918-19, when it is thought 50 million people worldwide died, nearly half of them young, healthy adults.