A
three-day council of war on avian influenza opened here to warnings
that a flu pandemic was inevitable, could kill millions and inflict up
to 800 billion dollars in economic damage if the world failed to defend
itself.
An influenza pandemic,
potentially unleashed by a mutation of the H5N1 bird flu virus, "is
only a matter of time," World Health Organisation (WHO) Director
General Lee Jong-Wook said Monday.
"We don't know when this will happen, but we know it will happen," Lee
said. "(...) If we are unprepared, the next pandemic will cause
incalculable human misery... no society will be exempt and no economy
will be unscathed."
Samuel Jutzi,
director of the animal production and health division at the Food and
Agricultural Organisation (FAO), said "the window of opportunity"
remained open for tackling the threat at its source: on the farm.
"The virus has not yet reassorted or mutated," said Jutzi. "Action is
required now. There is no time to lose here."
The Geneva confab is the seniormost global meeting of doctors,
veterinarians and public-health officials since the avian influenza
scare erupted in 2003.
It is also
the first to gather the World Bank alongside the WHO, the FAO and World
Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), a Paris-based agency that sets
veterinary standards in farm trade.
The conference takes place against a backdrop of growing concern about
the failure to roll back the H5N1 bird flu virus in Asia, its spread to
Europe and the vulnerability of Africa, the world's poorest continent.
"We have experienced a relentless spread of avian flu," Lee said sombrely.
Lee said that 63 deaths, out of 124 known cases of human infection, had
been reported to the WHO, 150 million fowl had been slaughtered and the
economic cost of the virus was more than 10 billion dollars.
The World Bank's lead economist for East Asia and the Pacific, Milan
Brahmbhatt, said that a major pandemic could clip between two or three
percent off the global economy, inflicting costs of as much as 800
billion after a year.
For rich
countries alone, the cost could be 550 billion dollars, the World Bank
said separately in a report issued in Geneva.
At present, H5N1 is transmissible from bird to humans who are closely
exposed to virus expelled by sickly fowl in their faeces and nasal
secretions.
But it cannot be easily
passed from humans to humans. The fear is that the more the virus
spreads, the greater chance it has to mutate, picking up genes from
ordinary flu that could make it highly contagious from humans to
humans.
This feared mutation could
occur if H5N1 is transmitted to a human or a pig that already has been
infected by the conventional flu virus.
No-one would have any immunity against the new pathogen, which means a
pandemic could swiftly spread in the modern era of jet travel and the
globalised economy.
The Geneva meeting is looking at national and global preparations for coping with a pandemic.
These include stockpiling drugs and face masks, preparing hospitals for
an emergency, setting up emergency transport and food supplies, and
advising the public in order to avert a panic.
But a bigger priority is to target the risk of a virus mutation itself,
among domestic fowl where H5N1 has holed up.
This means beefing up veterinary surveillance, culling infected
poultry, protecting fowl with H5N1 vaccine and reporting cases of
infection swiftly and accurately.
Another task is to compensate farmers for culls. If too little is
offered, farmers may hide an outbreak of disease; if too much is
offered, they may be tempted to deliberately infect their birds, said
Brahmbhatt.
Indonesia's state
minister for national development planning, Sri Mulyani Indrawati,
acknowledged that her country was wrestling with major problems, and
"at sometimes we are quite overstretched."
The country lacks local veterinarians to check on flocks and
epidemiologists to monitor and evaluate outbreaks and illegal vaccines
are circulating, she said.
Mike
Ryan, director of the WHO's epidemic and pandemic alert and response
unit, said that fixing basic gaps in veterinary and human wealth would
not come cheap.
"We need capital investment. This is going to cost money," Ryan said.
The World Bank said last Friday it would make up to 500 million dollars
available to poor countries to help them meet the threat.
