No one is certain whether or not we could prevent a flu pandemic. The most effective way would be to eradicate the virus from birds – however, it would be almost impossible to do this in the short term.

The World Health Organisation will soon have 3 million treatment courses of antiviral medications. If these drugs are used prophylactically near the start of a pandemic they could reduce the risk that a fully transmissible virus would emerge – even to delay its international spread would give us valuable time to get vaccine supplies out.

We can never be sure about the early behaviour of a pandemic virus. If current scenarios happen (positive ones) it may be possible to delay the international spread of a pandemic, thus providing us with time to create and produce a vaccine in large quantities. We cannot create a vaccine until we know what type of virus the new mutated one is. When/if the mutated virus does emerge, we need time to identify it, create a vaccine and then produce it in large quantities and distribute it.

If all goes our way during the initial stages of a pandemic – meaning, if at that moment we have excellent surveillance and logistics capacity in areas where the pandemic first hits, plus if we can restrict the movement of people in and out of the infected area(s) – then there is a chance we could create that window of time and contain the pandemic.

According to the World Health Organization, surveillance, international cooperation and sharing of data needs to improve.

Written by: Christian Nordqvist
Editor: Medical News Today