# 3212
The meeting by WHO (World Health Organization) member nations in Geneva this week, which has been truncated to 5 days from the originally scheduled 9, will deal almost exclusively on the influenza pandemic threat currently facing the world.
The meeting has been shortened because Health Ministers need to return to their own countries as soon as possible to deal with the growing spread of the A/H1N1 virus.
There are a number of very serious, and politically charged, issues on the table this week. Among them:
- Whether the WHO should raise the Pandemic Alert Level to 6 (and when)
- Whether to order the switchover to manufacturing a pandemic vaccine
- How to fairly distribute a scarce vaccine to developing nations
- How to distribute scarce antiviral medications globally
- Attempting to resolve the ongoing battle over virus sharing and intellectual property rights
This report from Reuters.
Health ministers focus on pandemic flu and vaccines
Mon May 18, 2009 6:12am EDT
* Flu fears cause shorter World Health Organisation congress
* Pandemic vaccine development to dominate five-day meeting
* Rich and poor countries to negotiate virus sample sharing
By Katie Reid and Laura MacInnis
GENEVA, May 18 (Reuters) - Health ministers from around the world agreed to drop nearly everything but pandemic flu from their annual congress agenda on Monday, so they can go home sooner to monitor the H1N1 strain that is now affecting Japan.
The new virus that killed 66 people in its epicentre Mexico has caused infections in at least 39 countries and caused the World Health Organisation to say a pandemic is imminent.
"As we meet today, influenza A/H1N1 is at our doors," Leslie Ramsammy, Guyana's health minister told the assembly, which will now end on Friday instead of next Wednesday.
The delegates including Mexico's health minister Jose Angel Cordoba will spend this week discussing how to best respond to the H1N1 flu, which has caused mild symptoms in most of the 8,480 people infected to date.
They will also seek an agreement on how samples of the virus should be handled and shared with pharmaceutical companies working to develop vaccines to fight the strain, which is a genetic mixture of swine, bird and human viruses.
None of these issues are easily solved, nor will any agreed to resolution satisfy all parties.
Even the easiest appearing decision, whether and when to raise the pandemic alert level, is fraught with political arm twisting.
Declaring a Pandemic Phase 6, even for a `relatively mild’ virus, could adversely affect many sectors of the global economy. It could severely discourage travel and tourism.
For a world that is already suffering a major recession, raising the pandemic alert level is viewed as another unwelcome blow.
The criteria on when to raise the pandemic levels have been `modified’ several times in the past 30 days. There has also been open speculation in the media that some countries are not testing or reporting on cases in an attempt to prevent a change in the alert phase.
And this may be the easiest issue facing the WHO this week.
Deciding to switch over to a manufacturing a pandemic vaccine sounds obvious, but it would mean sacrificing some part of the seasonal vaccine manufacturing run, and that could end up costing lives.
And the toughest problem: sharing scarce medical resources during a global health crisis.
Under the most optimistic scenario, less than 1/3rd of the world’s population could receive a pandemic flu vaccine in the first year of an outbreak.
Fewer still could receive antiviral treatment.
Whatever public face is put on this meeting, I expect that it will be contentious behind closed doors. And I also expect that many of these issues won’t be fully resolved this week.
Stay tuned.
