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A quarantine official checks the temperatures of arriving passengers at Narita international airport, east of Tokyo - Source: Reuters -
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Outbreaks of swine flu in humans in Mexico and the United States
have the potential to cause a worldwide pandemic but it is too
early to say whether they will, the World Health Organisation is
saying.
WHO director-general Margaret Chan, after taking advice from
experts who held emergency talks, declared the outbreaks to be a
"public health emergency of international concern". This means
there is a risk of the new disease spreading to other
countries.
In a statement, she urged health authorities worldwide to be on
high alert for unusual patterns of disease and any rise in flu-like
cases or severe pneumonia, and report them to the WHO.
"This is clearly an animal strain of the H1N1 virus and it has
pandemic potential because it is infecting people," Chan said
earlier on a teleconference.
"However, we cannot say on the basis of currently available
laboratory, epidemiological, and clinical evidence whether or not
it will indeed cause a pandemic."
The United Nations health agency has warned for several years that
a new virus strain could spark a human influenza pandemic that
could sweep around the globe and kill millions.
The new H1N1 flu strain - a mixture of swine, human and avian flu
viruses which has killed up to 68 people among 1,004 suspected
cases in Mexico and infected eight in the United States - is still
poorly understood and the situation is evolving quickly, Chan
said.
The emergency committee of experts that held three-hour talks with
Chan and senior WHO officials on Saturday heard reports from the US
and Mexican authorities.
The experts "agreed that more information is needed" before a
decision could be made concerning any change in the pandemic alert
level, currently 3 on a scale of 1 (low risk of human cases) to 6
(efficient and sustained transmission between humans), a statement
said.
"Serious discussions"
"I would characterise the discussions as serious. The overall
situation was reviewed by the committee and the importance of the
discussions and situation was recognised," Keiji Fukuda, acting WHO
assistant director-general for health, security and the
environment, told Reuters after the talks.
The emergency committee was composed of roughly 15 experts from all
regions, including experts in epidemiology, laboratory testing,
clinical treatment of cases, and travel, he said.
"The big push is to know what is the actual disease and virus
situation we are dealing with now. It is too early to say whether
things are changing for better or worse," Fukuda said.
There were currently no indications of similar outbreaks elsewhere
in the world, according to Chan, a former health director of Hong
Kong.
Health officials worldwide should also be alert to large incidences
of severe or fatal flu-like illness in groups other than young
children and the elderly, the ages usually at highest risk from
normal seasonal flu, she said.
Most of the dead in Mexico were aged between 25 and 45.
WHO experts in Mexico are helping authorities with disease
surveillance, laboratory diagnosis and managing cases.
The WHO stood ready with antiviral drugs to combat the outbreaks in
Mexico. But authorities have a sizeable supply of Tamiflu, known
generically as oseltamivir, and made by Switzerland's Roche
Holding, which has proved effective against the new virus,
according to the WHO.
"Influenza viruses are notoriously unpredictable and full of
surprises, as we are seeing right now," Chan said.
"We need to know how the virus is spread, what is the transmission
pattern and whether or not it is going to cause severe disease and
in what age group," she said.
It was premature for the WHO to announce any travel advisories or
to advise drugmakers to switch to producing a new vaccine - to be
derived from the new virus - from their traditional production of
seasonal influenza vaccines.
(For WHO information on swine flu go to: http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/en/index.html )
Have you been affected by the swine influenza? Are you a relative of one of the people affected? Email us at news@tvnz.co.nz .
