Reuters
GENEVA: Bird flu threatens human lives in hundreds and possibly thousands of disease blind spots around the globe, the late head of the World Health Organization said in remarks prepared before his death. The UN agency issued the report on Tuesday to the organization s annual assembly of Director-General Lee Jong-wook, who died on Monday morning from a stroke. There are still hundreds, maybe thousands of disease blind spots around the world, where no one knows what they have to watch for, or what they must report, Lee wrote. Preparedness for a feared bird flu pandemic, which could kill millions of people, is high on the agenda of the six-day meeting of the WHO s 192 member states. Health ministers from developing countries, which have so far suffered all the 124 deaths from bird flu, spoke frankly of lacking the funds and technical skills to fight the threat. Their assessments as the WHO studies a cluster of infections in Indonesia that has killed at least six people highlighted growing concerns about how and whether a human-to-human outbreak could be controlled. Member states of the African region are not yet adequately prepared for an influenza epidemic should one occur, Nigerian Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said in a speech made on behalf of African nations. He said most African disease surveillance systems are not sufficiently sensitive to pick up clusters of human cases and laboratory confirmation is expensive and technically demanding. Nigeria has not reported any human cases of the deadly H5N1 virus, which has infected 217 people and killed or forced the culling of millions of birds and fowl worldwide since late 2003. Djibouti has had a single infection, the first confirmed in sub-Saharan Africa, and Egypt has had six deaths among 14 cases. Egyptian Health Minister Hatem El-Gabali said it was hard to convince those who rely on raising birds as a cheap source of protein and family income to kill the birds. Fighting avian flu is a very challenging experience. In countries like Egypt you are not fighting avian flu, you are fighting the culture, he told a technical meeting on pandemics. Djibouti health official Mouna Osman said more help was needed to help developing countries cope with new demands. She told Reuters that a two-year-old girl is recovering after being confirmed with H5N1 this month. Tests from three siblings with flu-like symptoms had not found the virus. Health minister Gao Qiang of China, which has reported 18 human cases since November, 12 of them fatal, admitted that his country had not yet controlled the disease. We face a lot of difficulties, not only financial but technical and human resources, Gao told the session. Additional reporting by Laura MacInnis in Geneva.
