‘EU ready for flu pandemic’

By Emily Smith

Date: 06/04/06

The world cannot avoid being hit by another influenza pandemic, but Europe will be ready to face the challenge in a year, according to the head of the EU's disease watchdog.

Since the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) was launched in July 2005, the Sweden-based centre has seen birds die from virus H5N1 in 11 EU countries, leading to widespread panic that the pathogenic disease could morph into a human strain.

ECDC director Zsuzsanna Jakab says it is impossible to know whether the problem would be H5N1 or another virus, but "one thing is for sure: there will be a pandemic sometime".

But after months spent checking national pandemic preparedness plans, Jakab says there is no need to panic.

"I think we are much more ready in the EU than we were a year ago. There have been a lot of national activities, some effective leadership from [Health Commissioner Markos] Kyprianou, and we have played our role too."

Although unable to pinpoint the date at which a pandemic might strike, the ECDC director thinks there will probably be no need to rush to the pharmacy this year.

"We are quite well prepared, but we are not already there. We need one more year...I don't think that will be too late."

If, after a year of preparing for the worst, most Europeans are still fit, Jakab suggests her organisation should then "concentrate on helping other [non-EU] countries". With viruses showing a total disregard for border control, "whatever we prepare will not be effective if we don't also safeguard other regions".

There is, Jakab says, as yet "no evidence of human-to-human infection". But, she says, the huge amount of EU attention focused on bird flu was "not unreasonable...There are still questions around the way H5N1 is transmitted and mutates. We should invest as much as we can in putting protective measures in place".

More science is also needed, she adds, because far more is known about existing human viral pandemics, such as HIV, which killed more than three million people last year, than about the currently far less fearsome H5N1. She says: "After the next year when we have put everything in place, if there is still no pandemic we will have to review the issue and see if it should still be so high on our agenda."

Comments by Zsuzsanna Jakab, Director of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), on the EU's preparedness for a major influenza pandemic in Europe.
Article is part of a European Voice Special Report, 'Pandemics'.

European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control: Avian influenza: Avian influenza viruses http://www.ecdc.eu.int/avian_influenza/index.php

---