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Mix-Ansicht- Asian bird flu was"1000 times worse" than SARS - CRASH_GURU, 05.02.2004, 16:30
Asian bird flu was"1000 times worse" than SARS
-->"Es ist wirklich noch nie dagewesen, dass all diese Länder einen derartigen Ausbruch zur gleichen Zeit haben Professor McKenzie said."
Das erinnert mich an einen Artikel bezĂĽglich Wiederbelebung der Spanischen Grippe durch Dr. Stranglove und Kollegen.
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SARS 'minor' next to bird flu
By Jamie Walker
February 6, 2004
THE Australian scientist who led the World Health Organisation fight against SARS in China warned yesterday that Asian bird flu was"1000 times worse" than that deadly outbreak.
A suspected bird flu patient is watched by her mum in Hanoi / AP
John McKenzie said the H5N1 strain of avian influenza, which has killed 17 people in Southeast Asia and forced the slaughter of millions of birds, represented"the worst scenario possible" for a worldwide flu pandemic.
"Whereas SARS was a wake-up call as to what could happen with influenza, the worries about avian influenza and the worries about new pandemic influenza are a thousand times worse than considering SARS," Professor McKenzie told The Australian.
"SARS was just a kind of minor thing compared to what a new pandemic of influenza would be."
A microbiologist at the University of Queensland, Professor McKenzie led the initial WHO mission to Beijing last March in response to the emergence of SARS.
That pneumonia-like virus has killed more than 700 people so far - mainly in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Canada - and created financial havoc, especially with tourism. It is estimated to have cost the world economy $80billion.
But Professor McKenzie warned that SARS, a coronavirus, was far less infectious than the avian flu that had apparently crossed over to the human population in Southeast Asia.
A 16-year-old girl from the Mekong delta province of Soc Trang in Vietnam yesterday became that country's 12th confirmed casualty; a further five people have died in Thailand.
The authoritative US Centres for Disease Control reported yesterday that the H5N1 strain had been detected in poultry in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, South Korea and Japan.
Reports suggested 12 of China's 31 provinces had confirmed or suspected outbreaks, while Indonesian Welfare Minister Yusuf Kalla said up to 10million chickens would have to be culled to arrest the disease's spread.
"It's really quite unprecedented to have all this number of countries at one time with a major outbreak of virus like this," Professor McKenzie said.
"It's also unprecedented to see all these human cases that we are seeing."
Professor McKenzie said the outbreak was far more extensive than previous eruptions of avian flu, which had claimed six lives in Hong Kong in 1997 and one in the Netherlands last year.
This was"incredibly worrying", because it significantly increased the risk of a human influenza pandemic,"which we are due for".
'We have been waiting for a new pandemic strain for the last 40 years or so now," he said.
"They occur normally every 10 to 30 years with varying degrees of severity, so we have been waiting for a new pandemic strain to arrive.
"And I think this is the worst scenario possible that could presage one. It does concern me enormously."
The last influenza pandemic was the Hong Kong flu outbreak in 1968, suspected to have originated from a cross-infection of human N2N2 and avian H3Nx virus strains in Asia.
Spanish flu, believed to have emerged from a swine or avian host, claimed up to 40million lives when it swept the world in 1918-19 in the aftermath of World War I.
CSIRO researchers revealed yesterday they hoped to produce a trial vaccine within months to immunise chickens at risk of contracting bird flu.
Spokesman Chris Prideaux said that even if development of the vaccine was too late to help curb the current outbreak, it would provide a good base from which to develop other vaccines to treat future outbreaks.
Professor McKenzie said although the chance of a human flu pandemic was greater than at any time in the past 30 years, the overall risk of such an international outbreak remained small.
But no country, including Australia, would be spared.
"Every country would get it," he said."We would be equally susceptible as anywhere else."
Meanwhile, UN experts approved limited animal vaccination today in the bird flu crisis to avoid unnecessary mass culling - a measure Asian countries fear could devastate their livestock.
Experts after a two-day conference said cautious use of vaccination could create buffer zones around already infected areas to prevent the disease spreading further.
"The mass culling of flocks outside of infected sites in reaction to outbreaks might therefore be largely avoided and major damage to the livelihoods of rural households and national economies averted," said a joint statement by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Health Organisation and the World Organisation for Animal Health.
- with Associated Press
The Australian
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