GENEVA: Bird flu may be capable of human-to-human transmission, raising fears of a global pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.
“We believe a pandemic will happen but we don’t know when,” said Guenael Rodier, head of communicable diseases surveillance and response at the United Nations health agency.
Although only a few dozen people have so far died from bird flu since it appeared in 2003, experts fear that if the virus mutates to allow easy transmission among humans, it could spread rapidly and widely, killing millions of people. Investigations in Vietnam earlier this year concluded that “the viruses are continuing to evolve and pose a continuing and potentially growing pandemic threat,” the United Nations health agency said.
“We Thursday, November 04, 2004 9:38:15 PMwas speaking in Geneva on the findings of a conference earlier this month in Manila, Philippines. “There is no evidence in any direction, but there are concerns.” The H5N1 strain of bird flu in Southeast Asia has so far only jumped from animals to humans, but not from person to person. It has killed 37 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four from Cambodia since late 2003, Stohr said. “The little information that we have could possibly identify that the virus is changing and the way it interacts with humans is changing,” Stohr told reporters.
Latest studies showed it would take three months for a possible pandemic to spread around the world, Stohr said. Monitoring of the virus should be stepped up and there should be increased control of the disease in poultry, WHO said in a report on its Web site. ap