# 3243
WHO rethinks criteria for Phase 6 pandemic flu
Fri May 22, 2009 12:12pm EDT
GENEVA, May 22 (Reuters) - The World Health Organisation has changed its view on the criteria for raising its global flu alert, saying on Friday that it needed to see signs of severe effects before declaring a Phase 6 pandemic is underway.
"What we are looking for and what we will be looking for is something, events which signify a really substantial increase in risk of harm to people," Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's acting assistant director-general, told a news briefing.
The WHO previously said its six-point scale reflected only the way a virus is spreading, not is severity. Fukuda said the U.N. agency was now seeking signals that "the risks for people have significantly gone up" before moving the alert from the current Phase 5. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Katie Reid and Laura MacInnis)
This isn’t the first time that politics and economic considerations have trumped science, nor is this the most egregious example.
It is merely the most recent.
We are now left with subjective (and unclear) criteria for what is, or is not, a pandemic.
Or to put it less precisely:
What we are looking for and what we will be looking for is something, events which signify a really substantial increase in risk of harm to people - Keiji Fukuda
Presumably they will eventually come up with something a little more tangible, something a little more concrete than looking for `something’.
I hope so.
Not only does all of this `negotiation’ over the definition of a pandemic look unseemly, it now puts Director-General Chan in the unenviable position of having to decide when a pandemic is a pandemic, without a clear cut definition.
The added criteria, that they must see `something’ or `events’ that signal a substantial increase in risk to people assumes we get accurate, honest, and timely surveillance and reporting from around the world.
Something we haven’t seen whole heck of a lot of out of places like China, Myanmar, Indonesia, and North Korea over the past few years.
I have to assume the political pressure exerted by some of its member nations was considerable – perhaps even insurmountable for the Director General.
A reminder that, for all the good the WHO does around the world (and it does), it still operates at the behest, and often at the pleasure, of its member nations.
And the fears of member nations that a pandemic declaration might exacerbate the woes of an already struggling global economy are probably legitimate. I imagine it would impact some sectors, particularly travel and tourism this summer.
Perhaps the H1N1 virus remains relatively benign. There is always that possibility. This decision may not directly come back to haunt us. At least, not with this virus.
But anytime we allow science to bend to political arm twisting, we find ourselves perched on that proverbial slippery slope.
Is it enough that an accepted objective standard be economically or politically inconvenient for it to be discarded?
What if it offends a religious or cultural belief? Should we discard it then?
Where do we draw the line?
Serious questions we should be asking ourselves, that go well beyond today’s decision by the WHO.
