International epidemiologists and officials of a growing number of countries are concerned that bird flu could mutate into a virulent form of human flu that could kill millions across the globe. They urge a united international front to defend against it.
"It's coming," says Dr. Lee Jong-wook, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), who urges intensified planning now. "When the pandemic starts, it will simply be too late."
The latest avian-flu strain, blamed by WHO for 63 deaths in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia, has spread to poultry in Russia and Kazakhstan and will almost certainly show up in Western Europe as well, international health specialists predict. Tens of millions of birds, mostly chickens and ducks, have been slaughtered in Asia to prevent spread of the animal strain.
WHO researchers say between 7 million and 100 million humans worldwide could die in such an outbreak. Dr. Michael Osterholm, head of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, predicts it could kill at least 1.7 million Americans. Worldwide, he foresees at least 180 million deaths and possibly 300 million.
But the operative word is "could." The disease must first mutate into a strain to affect humans; flu virus mutates with ease, and it could mutate into a killer strain -- or into a relatively harmless strain. Some analysts describe Dr. Osterholm's forecasts as far-fetched, given that only 675,000 Americans died in the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, when medicine was relatively primitive and between 20 million and 50 million people died worldwide. About 40,000 Americans, mostly the elderly, die of flu in an average year.
"This could be a false alarm," one researcher says. "But false or not, alarm is certainly appropriate."
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