UN official warns of pandemic triggered by bird flu
9/3/2006 14:23
David Nabarro, the Senior UN Coordinator for bird flu, warned yesterday
that the virus will mutate and trigger pandemic sooner or later.
Nabarro told
a news conference at the UN Headquarters in New York that it may be due to the
H5N1 virus or another influenza virus and could start anytime.
He noted that
the virus is capable of replicating inside humans, saying that "we have got a
virus to which humans are not resistant. "
"We have got a virus about which
we don't understand everything, " he observed, and warned that "it's this stage
of a pandemic alert that we've got our luxury of being able to get
prepared."
Nabarro also warned that once the pandemic starts with human to
human transmission, the time for preparing ends, calling on every country in the
world to "have its veterinary services on high alert for H5N1, to try to make
sure that they don't get caught unawares and find that it gets into their
poultry populations without knowing."
He said all the investment would be put
to the test of actually dealing with the crisis of trying to contain it or
reduce its impact.
Meanwhile, Nabarro predicted that the bird flu, which is
spreading across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, is expected to hit
the Americas within the next six to 12 months.
Xinhua
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