Bird flu summit warns of global rich-poor divide

The great divide between the rich and the poor would be catastrophic in the event of a global flu pandemic, Mexico’s health minister said yesterday, and called on developed nations to put aside some of their influenza drugs for the less influential ones.

“I think the ethical, the political, the future security implications of the situation where only the wealthy countries have access to vaccines and drugs would be unimaginable,” said Mexico’s Julio Frenk, speaking on the sidelines of conference to prepare for a global flu pandemic.

“It would be as harmful, or even more harmful, than the pandemic itself.”

Frenk, attending the two-day conference with 30 health ministers and the heads of the World Health Organisation and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, said he received favourable responses from the other ministers to his proposal to devote a certain percentage of antivirals and future vaccines to share with developing nations.

While earlier reports had said he would suggest 10%, he said he did not present a specific figure.

“There was in the discussion this morning a complete agreement that we ought to avoid any polarisation of North and South,” Frenk said.

“This is a global problem and it requires global responses and I think ministers from all the wealthy countries are fully aware that national plans, no matter how well they are developed … will be insufficient if the rest of the world is also not prepared.”

As the countries talked about stockpiling and sharing their stores of the coveted anti-flu drug Tamiflu, the Canadian arm of Swiss drug giant Roche announced it was suspending private sales of Tamiflu in Canada until the flu season begins in December because soaring sales threaten to drain the seasonal flu allocation.

Paul Brown, a vice-president of Roche Canada, said they saw more demand for Tamiflu one day last week than all of 2004.

“What we have seen here in Canada is an unprecedented demand for Tamiflu, presumably as a result of heightened interest around all of the media coverage on pandemic and avian flu,” Brown said.

“We have taken the decision to proactively manage our inventory and make sure that our priorities are those patients who are most at risk at developing complications, so we have decided stop the shipment of Tamiflu until the flu season starts.”

Though earlier news reports indicated that the temporary freeze by Roche was worldwide, Roche headquarters in Geneva emphasised that suspending sales was up to each country.

“It’s done on a country-to-country basis,” said Roche spokesman Baschi Duerr. “It’s up to local management to decide where and to whom they want to distribute.”

Frenk said this was a perfect example of the stockpiling and hoarding that could alienate countries and the world’s people.

“We need to make clear that, first of all, we do not have a pandemic,” he said. “There is no reason to panic. But there is a threat of one, so we need to prepare, rather than panic.”

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and all officials at the conference agreed that the first line of defence was at the poultry farms of south-east Asia.

“All of us recognise that the risk of a flu pandemic requires the world to act now. That is why the world is gathered at one table here today,” Martin said.

“Our planning and preparation for pandemic will inarguably help to put us in a better position to respond to other emerging diseases, to natural disasters and to threats of bioterrorism we may face in the future.”

Sixty-two people have died in south-east Asia from bird flu, mostly in Vietnam and Thailand. The 62nd death – that of a 23-year-old man in Indonesia – was confirmed by a Hong Kong lab as the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu and announced yesterday by Indonesia’s Health Ministry.

Bird flu has swept through poultry populations across Asia since 2003, resulting in the deaths or destruction of 140 million chickens and ducks.

Though human cases have been linked to contact with sick birds, experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that is easily transmitted from person to person, possibly causing a pandemic that could kill millions.

The last major pandemic, the Spanish flu in 1918, killed up to an estimated 50 million people worldwide.