Flu pandemic could kill 150 million, UN warns

By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A global flu pandemic could kill
as many as 150 million people if the world fails to prepare for
an expected mutation of the bird flu virus enabling it to
spread from human to human, the United Nations said on
Thursday.

Dr. David Nabarro of the Geneva-based World Health
Organization said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked
him to head up a worldwide drive to contain the current bird
flu pandemic and prepare for its possible jump to humans.

If the virus spreads among humans, the quality of the world
response will determine whether it ends up killing 5 million or
as many as 150 million, Nabarro told a news conference.

The last flu pandemic, which broke out in 1918 at the end
of World War One, killed more than 40 million people and drove
home the vulnerability of a world where borders had less and
less meaning, he said.

It seems very likely the H5N1 bird flu virus will soon
change into a variant able to be transmitted among humans and
it would be a big mistake to ignore that danger, he warned.

“I am almost certain there will be another pandemic soon,”
Nabarro said.

Some governments and international organizations have
already started joining forces to begin preparations.

U.S. President George W. Bush unveiled a plan at the United
Nations this month under which global resources and expertise
would be pooled to fight bird flu, and Washington is hosting an
October 7-8 planning meeting.

Canada is hosting an October 25-26 meeting of high-level
officials in Ottawa, and the WHO has called for a November 7-8
meeting in Geneva to coordinate needed funding.

66 DEATHS SINCE 2003

So far, the H5N1 virus has mainly infected humans who were
in close contact with infected birds and has killed 66 people
in four Asian nations since late 2003.

Millions of birds have been destroyed, causing estimated
losses of $10 billion to $15 billion to the poultry industry,
with the heaviest losses in Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia.
The virus has also been found in birds in Russia and Europe.

But once humans have caught it, the virus has shown it has
the power to kill one out of every two people it infects.

Asia and the Middle East are particular concerns as the
bird flu is now concentrated in Asia and could be carried to
the Middle East by migratory flocks. Nabarro said.

But an outbreak in an impoverished and conflict-ridden part
of Africa such as Sudan, where health services are scarce and
millions have been driven from their homes, could lead to “a
nightmare scenario,” he said.

Until now, the effort to contain the spread of the virus
among birds and prepare for a possible shift to humans has been
led by the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health,
the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization and the WHO.

Nabarro said he would head a new U.N. system-wide office in
New York that would begin mobilizing governments, international
agencies, health workers and the pharmaceutical industry.

Once the virus began spreading among humans, it would be
only a matter of weeks before a pandemic was underway, so a
rapid response would be crucial, he said.

Two challenges will be governments’ traditional desire to
ignore threats until they become real dangers, and their
reluctance to publicly admit they have a problem once the
disease starts spreading, he said.

Nabarro spoke on the same day as the U.S. Senate agreed to
spend $4 billion to stock up on anti-viral drugs and increase
global surveillance for the disease.

But the money, attached to an unrelated fiscal 2006
spending bill for the military, has not been embraced by the
House of Representatives, where it faces an uncertain future.

Sen. Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican shepherding the
defense spending bill through the Senate, said he would try to
block the avian flu provision.

Stevens argued that avian flu “has not yet become a threat
to human beings,” and added, “We ought to wait for the
scientists to tell us what needs to be done.”

A vaccine would be the best way to counter the virus and
several drug firms around the world are working on one. But
production is slow and the immunization must match the strain
that is actually infecting people, so it is not possible to
make them up before a new strain emerges.