Human flu pandemic likelihood 'very high'
The likelihood of a human flu pandemic is very high, US Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said as he begin a tour of south-east Asia to co-ordinate plans to combat bird flu.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu has swept through poultry populations in many parts of Asia since 2003 and jumped to humans, killing 60 people, mostly through direct contact with sick fowl.
While there have been no known cases of person-to-person transmission, World Health Organisation officials and other experts have been warning that the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people. In a worst-case scenario, they say millions of people could die.
Three influenza pandemics have occurred over the last century and “the likelihood of another is very high, some say even certain”, Leavitt said yesterday after meeting Thai health officials to review the country’s preparations against the disease.
“Whether or not H5N1 is the virus that will ultimately trigger such a pandemic is unknown to us,” he told a news conference. “The probability is uncertain. But the warning signs are troubling. Hence we are responding in a robust way.”
Leavitt, accompanied by the director of WHO and other top health professionals, also plans to visit Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam to prepare for the anticipated public health emergency.
His tour comes after US President George Bush last month established the “International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza” to co-ordinate a global strategy against bird flu and other types of influenza.
Leavitt said “containment” was the first line of defence against the illness, encouraging countries to step up development and production of vaccines and strengthen efforts to detect any cases of human-to-human transmission early.
World Heath Organisation Director General Dr. Lee Jong-wook said preparation was the key to preventing a flu epidemic such as the one that struck in 1918, killing an estimated 40 million to 50 million people.
Turkey and Romania have culled thousands of birds as a precaution after preliminary findings of bird flu in their flocks of domestic fowl. Their neighbours, meanwhile, banned poultry imports from the two countries.
The European Union yesterday banned imports of live birds and feathers from Turkey. Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Poland, Ukraine and Serbia-Montenegro also banned poultry imports from both Turkey and Romania.
The EU sent experts to Romania and Turkey to help with testing samples for bird flu.
First tests by Romanian scientists were inconclusive, and further tests would be conducted by labs in Britain, Romanian Agriculture Minister Gheorghe Flutur said. “I hope this week we’ll clarify things,” he said.
Bird flu is difficult to diagnose correctly, especially in initial tests. Samples normally are sent to one of a handful of expert laboratories for confirmation.
Colombian authorities said yesterday they had detected the first suspected cases of bird flu in this South American country.
It was discovered in chickens at three farms in Tolima state in western Colombia, and the affected flocks were immediately quarantined to prevent the spread of the disease, the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.
There was no sign, however, of the H5N1 strain of bird flu that experts fear could mutate to become a dangerous human virus, the ministry said.
“It’s not the type of virus that has the world worried. It is not the type of virus that has sickened people in Asia,” Agriculture Minister Andres Felipe Arias told reporters. Chickens across the country will be checked for the virus, Arias said.
