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THE
World Health Organization (WHO) calculates the next
pandemic may strike between 20 percent and 30 percent of
the global population and kill an estimated 4 million to
over 7 million people.
Dr. Ma.
Nerissa Dominguez of the WHO’s Western Pacific Regional
Office said the projection is based on a cycle of
influenza pandemics since 1847 that spring up every 30
to 40 years.
In 1918
the world experienced the worst influenza pandemic when
a strain called Spanish flu, or H1N1, killed an
estimated 25 million people across the globe.
“We have
to be prepared because all the requirements for the next
pandemic are already here,” said Dominguez in a media
workshop in Baguio City recently.
By
November 2007, the relatively new H5N1 virus that causes
avian influenza had killed birds in 63 countries since
2003 and led to the destruction of millions of poultry
in these countries. The Philippines has been free of the
virus up to the present.
In
January 2006, avian flu was detected to have arrived in
30 countries that previously had been free of the virus;
and the bug was shown to have crossed the species
barrier on multiple occasions so that more than a
hundred poultry workers had been killed, according to
the WHO. As of April this year, the WHO recorded a total
of 382 cases of avian influenza in humans, including 241
deaths.
The fear
is that there may soon be a human-to-human infection of
H5N1, which, health experts said, could be the precursor
of a pandemic, especially since only a few of the
vaccine effective against the first generation of the
virus is available and mutations could be expected.
“As no
virus of the H5 subtype has ever circulated widely in
humans, vulnerability to infection with a pandemic H5
strain will be universal,” warned Rodriguez.
She
added the next influenza pandemic is expected to spread
faster because of ease of travel and economic
globalization involving worldwide daily merchandise
trading, so that it is expected to cause severe economic
disruption in the world.
The
majority of avian-influenza cases in people were found
to be in those aged 20 to 29 years, the prime human
productivity time.
Rodriguez said many of the world’s infectious diseases
have originated from animals and affected humans
“because of close contact.” She mentioned ebola
hemorrhagic fever, monkey pox, the Japanese
encephalitis, acquired immune deficiency syndrome
(AIDS), and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
Rodriguez said the WHO encourages member states to
reduce the opportunities of human infection by
implementing an early warning system, rapid virus
containment response, and spread delaying measures in
synch with global strategies aimed at controlling avian
influenza.
She said
the WHO has a stockpile of 3 million anti-bird flu
medicines, which may prove to be not enough should a
pandemic strike. “The risk of a pandemic is great. The
risk will persist.”
Dr.
Lyndon Lee Suy, program manager of the Health
department’s emerging infectious diseases division, said
the Philippines runs the risk of avian influenza even
from local poultry, but he did not say why this is so.
Despite
the presence of H5N1 in many of its neighboring
countries, the Philippines has yet to have a single case
of the disease drawing great curiosity from many health
experts in the world.
The
health department has allocated P60 million for staving
off avian influenza this year and has at least 17
government hospitals on stand-by for emergency response. |
