WHO experts draw up pandemic bird flu battle plan

WHO PANDEMIC BIRD FLU PLAN - The World Health Organization (WHO) opened a technical meeting on Monday to discuss how to sharpen plans for preventing the bird flu from becoming a pandemic disease among people. WHO convenes international meeting to discuss influenza pandemic containment strategy : On Monday 6 March 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) will convene a three-day technical meeting of international public health experts at its Geneva headquarters, to discuss a rapid response strategy in the event of an influenza pandemic emerging.

The meeting will continue development of an operational guide for WHO and other public health authorities to use in an attempt to extinguish a pandemic in its initial stages. WHO experts discuss plan for curbing potential human pandemic : Using the draft protocol issued on 27 January 2006 as a departure point, the meeting will define priorities for WHO and its partners as planning for a pandemic containment effort moves forward. On Monday 6 March 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) will convene a three-day technical meeting of international public health experts at its Geneva headquarters, to discuss a rapid response strategy in the event of an influenza pandemic emerging.

WHO experts draw up pandemic bird flu battle plan

The global spread of bird flu is unprecedented and the threat of a human pandemic will not go away, but the world is not totally defenceless, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday in Geneva. The meeting will continue development of an operational guide for WHO and other public health authorities to use in an attempt to extinguish a pandemic in its initial stages. Using the draft protocol issued on 27 January 2006 as a departure point, the meeting will define priorities for WHO and its partners as planning for a pandemic containment effort moves forward.

The meeting will focus on three areas: operations (the logistics for mounting such an effort), surveillance and epidemiology, and public health measures (quarantines, anti-viral medicines, social distancing measures, etc.) From 6-8 March, more than 30 experts in a variety of disciplines including epidemiology, virology, public health, and laboratory issues, will discuss how WHO and the global public health community might effectively contain the transmission of a pandemic virus at its source.

A containment protocol will enable a coordinated approach to the rapid detection, assessment, and response to the emergence of a pandemic virus. Halting a pandemic depends on several factors, such as the early identification of the pandemic strain, the ability of the global community to implement containment procedures, and the ability to effectively control the movement of people in and out of the affected area, to prevent further geographical spread of the virus.

Even if the pandemic cannot be stopped, public health interventions might buy time to allow countries to further strengthen their response systems, as well as accelerating the production of pandemic vaccine. While no efforts to extinguish influenza pandemics have ever been attempted, the continued surveillance of the avian influenza H5N1 strain allows the global community a unique opportunity to monitor the evolution of a possible pandemic strain. If there is even a small chance that the enormous health, economic and social damages caused by a pandemic might be averted, then WHO has a responsibility to try. The opening of the meeting will be open to the public and to journalists from 9:am to 9:45 am. The meeting will begin at 9am on 6 March 2006, in Salle B at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Influenza pandemics arise when a “novel” influenza virus emerges, infects humans, and spreads efficiently and sustainably among them. Once such an event starts and reaches a certain level of local or regional spread, continued worldwide spread of the virus is considered inevitable. A novel human influenza virus can start as a purely avian influenza virus that adapts, through gradual mutation, to humans or as a hybrid influenza virus that WHO pandemic influenza draft protocol for rapid response and containment contains a combination of genes derived from both an avian and a human influenza virus.

Regardless of its origin, such a virus is termed “novel” because it has not circulated widely among humans in the recent past, leaving most people with no pre-existing immunological protection against the virus. Theoretically, many different avian influenza viruses have the potential to evolve into a pandemic virus. However, at this time, the virus of most concern is the H5N1 strain of avian influenza. Following outbreaks that began in mid-2003, this virus has become firmly entrenched in poultry populations in parts of Asia and has recently spread westwards to affect parts of Europe. In so doing, the virus has become a major agricultural and economic burden. Although the species barrier remains considerable, and people are not easily infected, more than 150 human cases have been laboratory confirmed since December 2003. More than half of these cases have been fatal.

To date, H5N1 viruses have not been associated with the type of community-wide outbreaks that are characteristic of human influenza. However, all influenza viruses have the capacity to undergo genetic and antigenic change in unpredictable ways. Concern is great that such change could allow the H5N1 virus to spread efficiently and sustainably among people. Should an H5N1 virus anywhere in the world develop this ability, and if the outbreak caused by its initial emergence is not contained, the chances are very high that the virus will spread globally and cause a pandemic. The 1918 pandemic virus, which is thought to have originated as a purely avian influenza virus, resulted in an estimated 40 to 50 million deaths worldwide within one year.

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