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WHO calls meeting to Check the expansion of Flu Pandemic
Submitted by Neelam Goswami on March 4, 2006 - 10:47.
The WHO announced the meeting of the Public health experts in Geneva next week for quick action to head off a potential influenza pandemic. Organization is set to convoke the three-day conference as a Hong Kong official reported another possible human case of H5N1 avian flu in China, involving a 32-year-old man who died yesterday. This week witnessed the H5N1 strain of avian flu in poultry and domestic pets in Europe.
The international body stated: "Even if the pandemic cannot be stopped,
public health interventions might buy time to allow countries to further strengthen their response systems, as well as accelerating the production of pandemic vaccine."On January 27, WHO released a draft rapid-response plan at a Tokyo meeting. To continue work on the plan, more than 30 experts in epidemiology, virology, public health, laboratory issues, and other disciplines will meet Mar 6 through 8 in Geneva, announced by the international body. The meeting will continue development of an operational guide for WHO and other public health authorities to use in an attempt to extinguish a pandemic in its initial stages and will discuss how WHO and the global public health community might effectively contain the transmission of a pandemic virus at its source. Using the draft protocol as a departure point, the meeting will define priorities for WHO and its partners as planning for a pandemic containment effort moves forward.
Officials told that the meeting will focus on three areas: operations (the logistics for mounting such an effort), surveillance and epidemiology, and public health measures such as quarantines, anti-viral medicines and social distancing measures.
To prevent further wide spread of the virus, a protocol policy will enable a coordinated approach to the rapid detection, assessment, and response to the emergence of a pandemic virus. For checking the expansion of the pandemic several factors such as the early identification of the pandemic strain, the ability of the global community to implement containment procedures, and the ability to effectively control the movement of people in and out of the affected area, can be adapted.
To obscure the influence of the pandemics no efforts have ever been attempted. Many experts are doubtful that stopping an emerging pandemic is possible, and the WHO has acknowledged that it will be very difficult at best. The continued observation of the avian influenza H5N1 strain allows the global community a unique opportunity to watch over the gradual development of a possible pandemic strain.
The meeting will begin at 9am on 6 March 2006, in Salle B at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland and will be open to the journalists and public from 9:am to 9:45 am
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