# 1275
With meetings ongoing over viral samples from Indonesia and other developing countries, and the northern hemisphere's flu season already starting to show some signs of awakening, some strong statements are coming from world health leaders.
First, this from the United Nations.
Preparedness key to tackling global flu pandemic, says top UN health official
20 November 2007 – The head of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) has underlined the need to make full use of the resources available to prepare for a possible influenza pandemic, warning that no country will be left unaffected should an outbreak occur.
“Vulnerability is universal,” WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan said today at the opening in Geneva of the Intergovernmental Meeting on Pandemic Influenza Preparedness. “A pandemic will, by its very nature, reach every corner of the earth, and it will do so within a matter of months.”
Dr. Chan emphasized that this shared vulnerability calls for shared responsibility, and collective action to fulfil that responsibility. “In terms of the risk of disease, we really are all in the same boat,” she said.
That is why the international community has an obligation to use the advance warning it has been given to prepare for a possible influenza pandemic, which raises major issues for global public health, said the Director-General.
“Preparedness has moved forward on multiple fronts,” she stated. “Countries need to brace themselves for a situation where up to 25 per cent of the workforce may be ill at a given time. They have to brace themselves for a possible meltdown of basic municipal services and a slowdown of economic activity.
“And this situation will be occurring globally,” she added. “There will be no fortunate unaffected parts of the world.”
Among the issues the Geneva meeting will be looking at is access to benefits, in particular access to pandemic vaccines. “In terms of preparedness, access to vaccines is almost certainly the greatest concern in countries that lack their own manufacturing capacity,” Dr. Chan noted.
She expressed support for any effort that leads to greater and more equitable access to pandemic vaccines, calling them the “best protection against the risk that the next pandemic will negate or set back our hard-won achievements in health development.”
The meeting will also address the sharing of viruses for medical research, which Dr. Chan pointed out serves public health in ways that go beyond the development of pandemic vaccines, including by providing “the first clues, the first early warning, that the virus may be evolving in a dangerous way.”
And then we have this rather sober analysis from Doctor Narendra Singh, the Pandemic Preparedness and Training Specialist of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community.
Singh: Pacific must learn from the past
TIMOTHY NAIVALUWAQA
Wednesday, November 21, 2007THE Pacific must learn from the lessons of the past or pay a very heavy price through disease and deaths, regional health workers were warned yesterday.
Doctor Narendra Singh, the Pandemic Preparedness and Training Specialist of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community, said even though six Pacific island nations had experienced losses of up to 25 per cent of their populations during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, there had been very little planning or measures put in place to counter any similar outbreak.
Dr Singh urged leaders of the Pacific to make the necessary effort in formulating strategic plans to combat any such pandemic as one of the deadliest diseases, Avian Flu, spreads in countries close to the region's borders.
Dr Singh said since the first-known outbreak in 2003, avian flu has proven to be more deadly than the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that surfaced about five years ago.
"Avian flu has been detected in 11 countries and recorded a total of 335 infections of which there were 207 deaths," he said.
"Research shows that fatalities occur in six out of every 10 people who contract avian flu while for SARS the figure stands at three in 10.
"Another major concern about the avian flu is that it tends to affect people of young and productive ages with the average being 18 years."
Dr Singh said while avian flu did not survive well as a disease, it could become efficient once it evolved into a pandemic.
He said the threat facing the Pacific was very real as the majority of avian flu cases being detected are found in Indonesia. He said with the Pacific having a high rate of transit of people to and from affected countries, there was a real risk of the disease coming to the region.
He said it was vital that all Pacific island nations prepared strategic communication plans to combat any such pandemic to rescue the region from complete chaos.
