Flu pandemic could kill 150 million, UN warns
By Irwin Arieff
Updated: 7:09 p.m. ET Sept. 29, 2005
UNITED NATIONS - 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 Oct. 7-8 planning meeting.
Canada is hosting an Oct. 25-26 meeting of high-level officials in Ottawa, and the WHO has called for a Nov. 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.
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