PRESS CONFERENCE BY UN Avian flu coordinator

 

The chief United Nations official tracking the H5N1 avian flu virus said today there was “good news and bad news” on the deadly threat’s status.  Although the virus had spread to 30 countries since January, he was satisfied that, at least for the moment, it had not mutated in a way that would spark an epidemic of transmissions among humans.  At the same time, he believed more needed to be done to boost response capacities in Africa, parts of Asia and the Middle East, where the virus had reached deep into some poultry populations.

In a press conference at United Nations Headquarters today, Dr. David Nabarro, United Nations System Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza, presented a mixed report on the global effort to deal with avian influenza and the pandemic threat that swept from Asia to Europe and Africa in the last year, killing millions of chickens and more than 100 people.

He told reporters that though H5N1 had been reported in only 15 countries between 2003 and 2005, in the first four months of this year, the virus had spread “quite dramatically” to 30 new countries, and now appeared to be quite deeply embedded into poultry populations in some African countries, the Middle East, in the Indian sub-continent, and was still quite a serious problem in Asia and parts Eastern Europe.

However, he was reassured by what he read and heard from virologists in the field that there was no recent evidence of any changes in H5N1 that made it more likely to be transmitted from human to human.  “Each day that this type of insight appears, I am truly reassured, because this is good news”, he said, adding “bad news” would be anything that suggested that human-to-human transmissibility was getting closer to becoming a reality.  But overall “no news is good news”, on that front.

He said he was also working very closely with the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other United Nations agencies on ways to reduce the risk of a human pandemic and to improve the capacities of countries to plan for a pandemic if it were to come.  Such planning was difficult, and there were “a lot of unknowns”, because it was hard for Governments to anticipate when an outbreak might occur, where it would occur within countries or regions, or who the most affected populations would be.

At the same time, the potential threat was so dramatic and alarming that it would be wrong for countries not to give emphasis to pandemic planning.  “So we have been looking within the UN at what is the scope of work that should be put into a pandemic plan, particularly the non-health aspects”, he said, stressing that much of the pandemic response should be targeted at non-health-related issues.  Such plans should also highlight the actions various parts of Government and civil society would be expected to perform, and how a framework for accountability could be put in place.

“We are still fighting quite a difficult foe in the H5N1 bird flu virus”, he said emphasizing the need to make sure that the international community’s coordinated response was “making a difference and supporting the interests of poor people”, millions of whom depended on chickens and other poultry, while at the same time not leading to unreasonable damage to the worldwide poultry industry.

But still, the fact that the virus could affect humans was a continuing cause for concern, and fears remained that the virus could undergo change and perhaps cause a human pandemic.  But in countries trying to tackle H5N1, some dramatic shifts in the virus and its impacts on communities could be seen if they had, among other things, strong strategies based on science and a high-level political engagement.

He said it was also helpful for Governments, particularly their agriculture and health ministries, to scale up rapid response capacities with stronger veterinary services; to ensure broad dissemination of information to the general public, professionals and local communities; to keep an emphasis on the needs of vulnerable people and their livelihoods; and to ensure strategic alliances across all levels of government and with the private sector and civil society.

Getting all those prerequisites in place wasn’t easy, particularly in countries that did not have strong implementation capacities, Dr. Navarro said.  “So we are always encouraging Governments to focus on results -- on trying to make sure that, at all times, if the results [of their initiatives] are not positive, that systems are in place to quickly analyse why.”

He was “quite pleased” with international support for nations struggling with the virus but wished that the money was coming in faster to countries that needed it.  At the same time, he knew that it was hard to press for quick disbursement of funding while at the same time trying to ensure that plans were properly designed and put in place.

The challenges of getting adequate funding and rapid implementation, particularly in Asia and Africa, as well as many places in the rest of the world were not small.  The overall story for the Asian region was mixed, he said, stressing that the challenges for Africa were “very difficult indeed”.  Some African countries were facing major difficulties trying to jump-start implementation of their strategies, as well as cash shortages.  Together with the World Bank, major donors and other parts of the United Nations, his office was looking very hard at ways of increasing resource availability for Africa, particularly following a direct request in that regard from the Secretary-General in late March.

He also emphasised that it was important for countries to be sure that pandemic planning was regionally coordinated, particularly to ensure cross-border synergy in case of a pandemic.  Dr. Nabarro said he’d been looking at pandemic plans from various countries as they evolved, adding that he’d seen many “exciting developments” while noting that yesterday the operational plan for the United States pandemic strategy had been released.   Washington’s response plan, as well as Belgium’s and others were advancing collective knowledge of how to combat outbreaks of the virus.

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For information media • not an official record