Avian flu threat intensifies need for preparedness (IDSA annual meeting)

It's only a matter of time before there's a pandemic of something.

By Amy Snow Landa, AMNews correspondent. Nov. 21, 2005.

Reports from conferences important to physicians

Amid the growing international focus on vaccines and antiviral stockpiles to combat a predicted flu pandemic, a top global health official is underscoring the critical role to be played by doctors and nurses on the front lines of health care delivery.

Pharmaceutical interventions will be essential, but they aren't going to solve the problem on their own, according to Klaus Stohr, PhD, head of the World Health Organization's Global Influenza Programme.

"In the end, the effectiveness of the intervention all depends upon the physician, the hospital, the nurse and the technical equipment available at the local level," he said in a speech delivered at the Infectious Diseases Society of America's annual meeting Oct. 6-9 in San Francisco.

Although drugmakers are ramping up production capacity and nations are scrambling to stockpile the antiviral drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir), there simply will not be enough vaccine and drugs for everyone who needs them, Dr. Stohr warned. "We believe that if a pandemic comes, there will be a significant dependence on primary health care and hospital services for symptomatic treatment."

There also will be a heavy reliance on nonpharmaceutical interventions, such as quarantines, voluntary home stays and protective face masks to prevent the spread of infection, he said. "These barriers will be the ones to slow down the spread and help reduce morbidity and mortality."

Dr. Stohr's remarks at the IDSA meeting coincided with published reports that the deadly Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19 first developed in birds and was similar to today's H5N1 avian flu virus, raising fears among national and international policy-makers that H5N1, like the earlier strain, could turn into a global human pandemic. Discoveries that the avian flu virus now has spread beyond Asia and as far as Turkey, Romania and Macedonia also have increased anxiety levels.