[afro-nets] WHO: Bird Flu Bigger Challenge Than AIDS

[Leela McCullough <leela@healthnet.org>]

WHO: Bird Flu Bigger Challenge Than AIDS
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World Health Organization Says Bird Flu Presents a Bigger Chal-
lenge to the World Than AIDS

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS Associated Press Writer

9 March 2006
The Associated Press

GENEVA - The lethal strain of bird flu poses a greater challenge
to the world than any infectious disease, including AIDS, and
has cost 300 million farmers more than $10 billion in its spread
through poultry around the world, the World Health Organization
said Monday.

Scientists also are increasingly worried that the H5N1 strain
could mutate into a form easily passed between humans, trigger-
ing a global pandemic. It already is unprecedented as an animal
illness in its rapid expansion.

Since February, the virus has spread to birds in 17 countries in
Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, said the WHO's Dr.
Margaret Chan, citing U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization es-
timates of the toll on farmers.

"Concern has mounted progressively, and events in recent weeks
justify that concern," Chan, who is leading WHO's efforts
against bird flu, told a meeting in Geneva on global efforts to
prepare for the possibility of the flu mutating into a form eas-
ily transmitted among humans.

U.S. health officials said Monday they have authorized the de-
velopment of a second vaccine to combat the deadly virus, which
already is believed to be changing.

The U.S. government has several million doses of a first bird
flu vaccine based on a sample of virus taken from Vietnam in
2004. The virus is believed to have mutated since then, health
officials said.

"In order to be prepared, we need to continue to develop new
vaccines," Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said
Monday at an immunization conference.

In Austria, state authorities said Monday that three cats have
tested positive for the deadly strain of bird flu in the coun-
try's first reported case of the disease spreading to an animal
other than a bird.

The cats had been living at an animal shelter where the disease
already was detected in chickens, authorities said.

Poland reported its first outbreak of the disease, saying Monday
that laboratory tests confirmed that two wild swans had died of
the lethal strain.

Chan told more than 30 experts in Geneva that the agency's top
priority was to keep the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu from mu-
tating.

"Should this effort fail, we want to ensure that measures are in
place to mitigate the high levels of morbidity, mortality and
social and economic disruption that a pandemic can bring to this
world," she said.

WHO says 175 people are confirmed to have caught bird flu, and
95 of them have died.

"No one can say when this will end," Chan said.

Global influenza pandemics as opposed to annual recurrences of
seasonal flu tend to strike periodically. In the 20th century,
there were pandemics in 1918, 1957 and 1968.

WHO said bird flu could potentially cause more deaths than those
from the global flu pandemics. Because the H5N1 virus is air-
borne, it is easier to transmit and much more contagious than
HIV/AIDS, WHO officials said.

Dr. Mike Ryan, director of epidemic and pandemic alert and re-
sponse at WHO, said, "We truly feel that this present threat and
any other threat like it is likely to stretch our global systems
to the point of collapse."

This is the first time world health authorities have tried to
stop a global influenza pandemic before it begins. Chan referred
to the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, as
evidence of "how much the world has changed."

SARS infected 8,000 people, killing 800 of them.

"In a globalized economy, with high volume of international
travel, vulnerability to new disease threats is universal," she
said. "It is the same for the rich and for the poor."

WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng said experts hope to isolate areas
where there is a bird flu outbreak and establish agreements al-
lowing international health authorities to respond quickly,
testing viruses and implementing containment measures.

Public health measures to quarantine areas, isolate people or
help give antiviral medicine to those infected with bird flu
also are on the agenda of the meeting, which ends Wednesday.

Even if a pandemic cannot be stopped, WHO says such measures can
buy time for health authorities to improve their response
strategies and stave off the disease until a pandemic vaccine
can be produced.

Meanwhile, a top animal health official with the Rome-based U.N.
Food and Agriculture Organization said developed countries had
responded slowly to bird flu, failing to control the disease in
Asia and not doing enough to prepare poor countries, particu-
larly in Africa, for its spread.

"In 2004 we said it will be an international crisis if we don't
stop it in Asia, and this is exactly what is happening two years
later," said Joseph Domenech, head of FAO's Animal Health Ser-
vice.

"We were asking for emergency funds and they never came. We are
constantly late."

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redis-
tributed.

Copyright 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

--
Leela McCullough, Ed.D.
Director of Information Services

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