According to a European Union spokesman, Philip Tod, the EU is not prepared for an outbreak of bird flu. If a flu pandemic broke out there are not enough stocks of antiviral drugs to deal with it.
The world is living under the looming threat of a flu pandemic which could appear as a result of a bird flu virus strain mutating. The mutation of the H5N1 bird flu strain, the most dangerous one, would then make the influenza transmissible among humans – humans would infect each other.
25% of each country’s population needs to be covered with antiviral drugs, says the EU (WHO recommendation). Many EU governments do not have this level of cover. The UK has 16 million doses of Tamiflu, an antiviral drug that has been used in South East Asia to treat humans with bird flu. The UK, with a population of 60 million, has 26.6% cover. Philip Tod did not disclose which EU nations do not have the targeted cover. He urged member nations to make sure they meet the current 25% cover.
The H5N1 bird flu strain has been found in Romania and Turkey. This strain is the one that killed over 60 people in Asia. It has made its way all the way to mainland Europe from as far as Vietnam.
Roche Holdings, the makers of Tamiflu, have seen sales rocket as EU nations, the USA, Japan and many others place huge orders for their stockpiles.
Demand is such for Tamiflu today that each tablet is costing $6 in the USA.
In 1918 Spanish Flu spread around the world rapidly and killed about 50 million people (estimate). That pandemic was caused by a flu virus that had mutated from bird flu. At that time the world population was much smaller than it is today, people travelled much less internationally and domestically. A flu pandemic today could take a much heavier toll on human life.
Scientists fear that the H5N1 virus could mutate if it infected someone with normal flu. The two viruses would exchange genes, the H5N1 strain would then mutate and become a disease that humans could rapidly spread to other humans. The moment that happened we would experience a flu pandemic (outbreak of flu on a global scale). Humans have no immunity to a mutated virus. The only medicine we have today is Tamiflu, an antiviral drug (not a vaccine, it is given to the patient when he/she has become infected). Unfortunately, cases are already arising of resistance to this antiviral drug.
At the moment the only way a human can become easily infected is from a bird. Some healthcare professionals have become infected because they had a great deal of continuous contact with an infected patient. But, for the moment, human-to-human infection is not a problem. Those healthcare professionals did not go on to infect other humans. If the virus mutates, however, then the spread of infection among humans would be swift.
We cannot make a vaccine for the new mutated virus because we do not know what form it is going to take. It is a bit like deciding which weapons to stockpile when you know there is going to be an attack – it could be in the form of fire, water, rocks, arrows, or even a hurricane. If you stockpile on firefighting equipment and the attack comes in the form of a flood, your stockpile would be pretty useless.
Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today