Even developed countries are not prepared for the possibility that the virulent avian flu could develop into a full-scale pandemic, the director of the National Institute for Communicable Diseases, Professor Barry Schoub, said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the launch in Cape Town of the African Genome Education Institute, he said the question is not if, but when, the next flu pandemic will hit the world.
He said that scientists do not have the tools to predict whether the pandemic will be caused by the avian flu, which has killed 52 people in south-east Asia since January, or some other strain of the flu virus.
The avian flu involves a new virus, known as H5N1, to which humans have no immunity, and it is able to cross the species barrier, from birds to other animals and humans.
But there is no definitive evidence yet that the virus is transmitted from human to human, a precondition for a pandemic.
Schoub said between 20-million and 40-million people died in the 1918/19 Spanish flu pandemic.
The fact that millions of people now travel by air every year, and that there will be 23 crowded ”megacities” with populations above 10-million in the world by 2015, contributes to the potential for a rapid spread of infection.
However, on the plus side, health care has much improved since 1918 and there is better nutrition, surveillance and diagnostic technology, as well as the potential to design a vaccine — though the six months it would take would make it too late to fight the pandemic. — Sapa