WHO calls for pandemic preparation

Good preparation in all countries is crucial to preventing a possible avian influenza pandemic among human beings, Lee Jong-wook, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday in Beijing.

It is good news that many countries have pledged to contribute more money to bird flu control efforts, but they must ensure the pledges are realized, he said.

Lee made the remarks in an interview with domestic reporters during the International Pledging Conference on Avian and Human Influenza, which called on various countries to provide financial support to the global war against the epidemic.

Large amounts of money are expected to be donated to the United Nations by conference participants. The UN will then give money to those members in need.

However, much more money has to be mobilized by individual governments, he stressed.

Aside from financial preparation, it is also crucial for countries to maintain good surveillance systems for any possible outbreaks among poultry and human beings, he said.

He admitted that it is a huge challenge for health workers to undertake surveillance in countries like China.

"How do you find five or eight people sick with an unknown disease out of 1.3 billion population?" he said, adding that China has worked very hard to improve its surveillance system in the past years.

He said that Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group is collaborating with Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche in building Tamiflu production facilities. Tamiflu is the only drug known to be effective against H5N1 avian influenza infection in humans.

By hosting this kind of meeting, the Chinese Government has shown its commitment to avian flu, and to information sharing, he added.

"No place is safe now because of people's traveling, trade and so on. So we are sharing the risk," he said.

"I don't know when or where it will come, but if you look at the signs, avian flu in China, Viet Nam, Turkey, if you look at the history of avian flu, it is just a matter of time," said Lee.

Even so, there is no need to panic, he said. "In the past, we didn't have the scientific skills to know how the virus was changing, but now we have the scientific means to know what is happening. So this time we should be better prepared."

Even though this virus has not acquired the ability to transmit from human to human, the DNA sequence from China and Turkey is different.

WHO scientists are analyzing the individual DNA sequences and comparing to see if there are any mutations.

Source: China Daily