World is ‘unprepared for flu pandemic’

The world is unprepared for a flu pandemic, health officials said at a conference in Malaysia, citing a lack of political commitment, funding and a vaccine to protect humans against bird flu.

Without a vaccine against the deadly H5N1 strain, there’s no way of protecting billions of people who would be at risk should a pandemic start soon, officials from the US, UK and World Health Organisation (WHO) said at the International Congress on Infectious Diseases in Kuala Lumpur.

“We are a long way from being fully prepared,” Julie Gerberding, director of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters. “We do not have a vaccine that will provide universal protection, we do not have surveillance in every country, we do not have control of the virus in the animal reservoirs, and we have huge gaps in our basic understanding of influenza.”