Bird Flu Measures Benefit Public Health: WHO

By Patricia Reaney

LONDON — No one knows if the H5N1 bird flu virus will spark a human pandemic but the money and measures being put in place in case it does will benefit public health, a WHO official said on Tuesday.

Dr David Heymann, the representative of the director general of the World Health Organization for polio eradication, said a vaccine is the ultimate weapon against a pandemic strain of influenza.

But improving laboratory and surveillance systems to detect bird flu and rapid diagnostic tests will help to deal with disease outbreaks.

"The trick with bird flu is to put the funding into areas of work that will strengthen disease detection, which is certainly going on," he said in an interview.

"I think there is the right balance of caution and concern and this has generated resources which are benefiting public health in general," he added.

Heymann said at the moment H5N1 is an avian virus and it is not clear if it will mutate to become highly infectious in humans.

"The unknown is there. The world is closer than it has been since 1968 but we don’t know enough to say if this will be the big pandemic," he said, referring to the last influenza pandemic.

"The less you know, the more prepared you have to be," Heymann added.

HEALTH WORKERS VITAL AND VULNERABLE

The H5N1 avian virus has infected 191 people and killed 108 but it has not shown it is capable of spreading easily from person to person.

To become highly infectious in humans, the virus will have to mutate on its own or mix its genetic material with a human influenza virus.

"Transmissibility is very important and we just don’t know what the transmissibility of a pandemic might be. Seasonal influenza has a high transmissibility," Heymann said.

In a lecture to Britain’s Health Protection Agency (HPA), which monitors infectious diseases, he warned that if the virus mutates into a pandemic strain, healthcare workers will be at the frontline in dealing with it and will face the greatest risk.

During the influenza pandemic in 1957, healthcare workers were among the most highly infected group.

"Health professionals have a major role to play in defining the cause of the disease, in investigating and containing that outbreak, in managing patients and in promoting low-risk behavior," said Heymann.

But he added that because there is a link between diseases in the hospital and the community, the health workers themselves could unwittingly be the source of an epidemic in the community.

"It is our responsibility to take every precaution necessary to ensure they, and in turn communities, are protected as adequately as possible," he said.