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WHO launches strategy to fight ‘inevitable’ flu pandemics
GENEVA, March 11, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The World Health Organization on Monday
launched a strategy to protect people worldwide over the next decade against
the threat of influenza, warning that new pandemics are “inevitable”.
Influenza epidemics, largely seasonal, affect around one billion people
and kill hundreds of thousands annually, according to WHO, which describes it
as one of the world’s greatest public health challenges.
WHO’s new strategy, for 2019 through 2030, aims to prevent seasonal
influenza, control the virus’s spread from animals to humans and prepare for
the next pandemic, WHO said.
“The threat of pandemic influenza is ever-present,” WHO chief Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
The world has suffered through a number of devastating influenzas
pandemics, including the Spanish Flu, which in 1918 killed tens of millions
of people globally.
Three pandemics have occurred since — in 1957, 1968 and in 2009 — when
the H1N1 swine flu pandemic claimed around 18,500 lives in 214 countries.
“Another influenza pandemic is inevitable,” the UN health agency said,
adding that “in this interconnected world, the question is not if we will
have another pandemic, but when.”
Launching the new strategy, the WHO chief stressed the need for vigilance
and preparation.
“The cost of a major influenza outbreak will far outweigh the price of
prevention,” he said.
While pandemic preparedness is estimated to cost less than $1 per person
per year, WHO said responding to a pandemic costs roughly 100 times that
amount.
The new strategy called for every country to strengthen routine health
programmes and to develop tailor-made influenza programmes that strengthen
disease surveillance, response, prevention, control, and preparedness.
– Not prepared enough –
WHO recommends annual flu vaccines as the most effective way to prevent
the spread of the disease, especially for healthcare workers and people at
higher risk of influenza complications.
It also called for the development of more effective and more accessible
vaccines and antiviral treatments.
Due to its mutating strains, vaccine formulas must be regularly updated
and only offer limited protection currently.
But Martin Friede, WHO’s vaccines coordinator, urged broader use of
seasonal vaccines, which help protect vulnerable populations but also help
prepare countries to rapidly deploy vaccines in the case of a pandemic.
“In a perfect world, everyone would be vaccinated,” Friede told reporters
in Geneva.
Tedros said progress in recent years had made the world better prepared
than ever for the next big influenza outbreak.
“But we are still not prepared enough. This strategy aims to get us to
that point,” he said.
WHO said it would expand partnerships to increase research, innovation and
availability of new and improved vaccines and other tools to fight influenza.
It insisted its new strategy would also have benefits beyond the fight
against influenza, since it would also increase detection of other infectuous
diseases, including Ebola.
BSS/AFP/SSS/1839 hrs