UN appoints official to combat threat from avian flu

UN appoints official to control avian flu

Geneva

Paul Ress

The United Nations has given David Nabarro, representative of the Director-General for health action in crises at the World Health Organization, the job of combating the growing global threat of avian influenza.

Immediately after the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, appointed him coordinator of the UN system last week, Dr Nabarro said: "We expect the next great influenza pandemic to come at any time now."

WHO has warned that the H5N1 avian flu virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily from person to person. As humans would have no natural immunity, such a new virus could cause widespread death and illness as well as social and economic disruption.

Dr Nabarro told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York that deaths could number between five million and 150 million and pointed out that the 1918 flu pandemic had killed more than 40 million people.

The avian flu virus has so far killed a total of 60 people in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia.

"WHO has been very clear about the imminent threat of a human influenza pandemic," the organisation’s director general, Lee Jong-wook, said. "The world is responding and moving quickly to get prepared. But coordination of these efforts is critical to ensure that all stakeholders give the best of what they have to offer and that countries receive the support they urgently require."

WHO has already sent all its member countries detailed guidance on actions they need to take.

Dr Nabarro said that the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has been working to control the spread of the flu among poultry, while WHO has been preparing for a potential spread from birds to humans.

"So if there is a species jump—if the virus moves and mutates from the bird population to the human population—we are ready to respond, to neutralise it, to contain it, and to delay the development of a major flu pandemic," he said.

Time was critical in the effort to contain avian flu, he said, because there would be only a few weeks between the time the human flu was detected and the point where it became an epidemic. An early warning system to detect the mutated flu is critical, he added.

In recent weeks several countries have joined forces to coordinate preparations. The United States announced a new international partnership on avian and pandemic influenza at the UN’s recent world summit in New York. Canada is hosting a ministerial meeting on 25 and 26 October to discuss a range of policy issues to support the work of the partnership. On 7 and 8 November WHO is hosting a meeting of all partners to coordinate the funding needed. Preparations being undertaken in Europe were described in a BMJ editorial (BMJ 2005;331:413-4, 20 August)