WHO warns army may be needed to fight bird flu

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http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6aa9e306-83d9-11da-9017-0000779e2340.html

 

 

 

Financial Times

 

Asia-Pacific

 

WHO warns army may be needed to fight bird flu

By David Pilling in Tokyo

Published: January 13 2006 02:00 | Last updated: January 13 2006 02:00

 

 

 

The World Health Organisation yesterday predicted authorities might

need to use the army and police to quarantine about 120,000 people to

contain aninitial pandemic flu outbreak of just 19 cases.

 

Hitoshi Oshitani, a consultant to WHO, said his estimates highlighted

the difficulty of formulating a rapid response toan initial outbreak

of mutated bird flu transmitted between humans.

 

Not only would such aggressive quarantining raise legal and human

rights concerns, he said, but knowledge about how to use antiviral

drugs as a preventative measure was limited.

 

Mr Oshitani, who presented his simulation at an international

conference in Tokyo, said the first requirement was rapid detection.

 

" Timeliness is key. If we do things the way we do right now, it will

probably be too late, " he said, adding that two weeks after an

outbreak was probably the absolute limit.

 

Experts said that preventing an outbreak from spreading rapidly would

be difficult even if there was timely confirmation. Kenji Fukuda, a

researcher at WHO's global influenza programme, said: " Right now we do

not know the optimum dosage or length of treatment for prophylactic

treatment. "

 

Officials said Roche, the Swiss pharmaceuticals company that

manufactures Tamiflu, was only now designing protocols to test

effective use of the antiviral as a preventative medicine. Still

experts said containment was the best hope of preventing a mutated

virus from spreading.

 

*The H5N1 avian flu virus that killed three people in Turkey has made

a small mutation that may adapt it more closely to infecting people

but it is still a long way from " going human " and starting a pandemic,

according to a largely reassuring genetic analysis released last night

by the World Health Organisation and UK Medical Research Council, adds

Clive Cookson.

 

The WHO's international flu centre in London said the mutation was in

the gene for haemagglutinin, a protein used by flu virus to attach

itself to host cells.

 

A similar mutation has been found previously in viruses taken from

human victims of H5N1 in Vietnam and Hong Kong