Pandemic Preparedness Complacency Still a Problem

By Anthony L. Kimery, HSToday

An eventual human pandemic at some unknown point in the future is virtually inevitable'

On the heels of the World Bank’s recent dire warning that an influenza pandemic would ignite a “major global recession,” several UN officials have once again warned about growing complacency toward preparedness for a flu pandemic.

Last Friday, Bernard Vallat, director general of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), warned that the complacency of developing countries where avian flu persists, like Egypt and Indonesia, has hampered efforts to eradicate the virus.

"The problem we have is mainly in the backyards of poor families in Indonesia and Egypt," Vallat said.

Monday, Dr. David Nabarro, the UN's pandemic preparedness czar, said, "“things are a lot better now than they were when we started this work in 2005, but they are not good enough. We are still not sufficiently prepared to properly bring a pandemic under control quickly."

It’s not a new warning. World Health Organization and other avian flu authorities have been saying for years that too many countries - especially those most at risk - have not been doing enough to monitor and control the virus’ spread. But the already developed nations also are said to not be doing enough to assist in adequate global surveillance and monitoring.

HSToday.us also has repeatedly reported on experts’ concerns about what they see as global complacency toward pandemic preparedness.

"Now there is fatigue, and the solution is to have new incentives for these people to cooperate with veterinary services in the field of disease policy implementation," Vallat said.

Nearly half of reported deaths from H5N1 have occurred in Indonesia. Egypt has experienced the most deaths outside Asia, with 22 deaths out of 50 reported infections.

With experts predicting that a worst case pandemic would kill hundreds of millions worldwide, the World Bank warned in a report released about a week ago that a pandemic would exact an economic toll in the trillions of dollars and gut global gross domestic product (GDP) by "almost five percent, constituting a major global recession."

"Because such a pandemic would spread very quickly, substantial efforts need to be put into place to develop effective strategies and contingency plans that could be enacted at short notice," the bank concluded.

Vallat said "vaccination is not the solution for the full eradication of the pathogen," which authorities have said may not work because many rural farmers in developing nations are not reporting or are under reporting problems.

Vallat and other experts have said vaccination programs must be accompanied by the culling of birds from infected flocks, farmers compensated and a "ring fence" of targeted vaccinations established. He added that on-going global bird/poultry vaccination programs will take another several years to complete.

Meanwhile, the The Center for Migration and Refugee Studies and the International Organization for Migration reported that refugees and economic migrants from influenza prone areas are a particularly vulnerable group who could spread a pandemic strain of influenza if they are not carefully monitored, quarantined and treated.

Similarly, World Bank economists Andrew Burns, Dominique van der Mensbrugghe and Hans Timmer stated that, “generally speaking, developing countries would be hardest hit, because higher population densities and poverty accentuate the economic impacts.”

At the recent Sixth International Ministerial Conference on Avian and Pandemic Influenza, participating nations were asked to pledge $500 million towards preparedness and mitigation efforts. That is the annual amount the United Nations says is needed to prepare for a calamitous worldwide pandemic.

More than $2.7 billion dollars has been promised - and $1.5 billion delivered – by international donors to supplement the spending by at-risk countries to combat bird flu during the last five years since the lethal virus emerged in Southeast Asia and spread across Asia, Europe and Africa.

But even with global preparedness, the World Bank dismally concluded – as have many pandemic authorities – that “an eventual human pandemic at some unknown point in the future is virtually inevitable."