'We must prepare for the worst'

2005-10-25 17:14

Copenhagen - A human influenza pandemic, provoked by bird flu or another virus, will surely hit Europe at some point and the EU needs to prepare for the ensuing public health crisis, a disease control expert said on Tuesday.

"Europe experienced three pandemics of human influenza in the last century, the average for the continent in recent centuries," said Denis Coulombier, who heads the preparedness and response unit of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

"There is no reason why it should not happen again," he warned.

Such a future pandemic was "inevitable but it may not come for years", Coulombier said on the sidelines of a World Health Organisation (WHO) workshop on planning for a global flu outbreak.

Deadly

It was also possible that a deadly strain of the H5N1 avian flu, which has killed at least 60 people since late 2003, might not be the trigger for a pandemic.

"There are many other candidate viruses, for example pig strains and horse and dog flu strains currently circulating in North America, or various human flu viruses," Coulombier said.

A three-day joint meeting of the WHO, the European Commission and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has gathered experts from 52 European countries in Copenhagen to discuss preparing for a possible flu pandemic on the continent.

"This is a global problem. No single country can address the problem. We must co-ordinate our efforts and keep up the momentum of preparedness. We do not know what the next virus will be," Coulombier said.

"It could be regular flu or a very serious virus like the Spanish influenza just after World War I, or just a mild epidemic. We have no indication, we must be ready for the worst."

Globalisation

Although Europe today is better prepared than previously to deal with the public health crisis wreaked by a pandemic, globalisation has also made it more difficult to contain viruses, Coulombier pointed out.

"We have much more international travel than at the time of the Spanish influenza outbreak 80 years ago. Then, viruses were transmitted more slowly by ship. Things move much faster today due to air travel," he said.

While this does not bode well for limiting a possible pandemic, Coulombier stressed that there was a major difference between the avian flu that is causing continent-wide panic today, which is an animal disease, transmitted between birds and which only rarely affects humans, and human influenza.

Mutations have occurred however, with more than 100 cases of people diagnosed with bird flu, all in Asia, killing more than 60 so far.

Experts meanwhile insist the risk in Europe is very low.

Beyond imposing strict protective measures on workers directly involved in culling poultry that might be infected with bird flu, and on other people in close contact with birds, the EU should focus on dealing with other as yet unknown viruses, Coulombier said.

- AFP