As world leaders build a response to the threat of a bird flu pandemic, health experts and officials simulated a worst-case scenario of a deadly outbreak among humans in Europe.
The experiment on the margins of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was one of a series governments and officials have been carrying out to assess their readiness.
It underlined, said David Nabarro, the United Nations' coordinator for bird and human influenza, that much work remains to be done in order to prevent or, if necessary, contain any outbreak.
"It is only as governments have begun to do simulations that countries are realizing they are nowhere near prepared for the kind of damage this does," he said in Davos.
"If we do not all work together effectively and get properly prepared, we will be badly hit by that pandemic."
The simulation was of what would happen when a pandemic strikes a European country and how it would cope.
The human death toll from the H5N1 strain of bird flu has risen to 80 since 2003, although Turkey, with four deaths in young people, is the only country outside China and Southeast Asia to report fatalities.
However, scientists fear that as the virus inevitably spreads among poultry and birds, it could mutate into a form which transmits easily between humans, sparking a pandemic that could claim millions of lives.
"It would be unconscionable if the world did not prepare" for a worst-case scenario, said Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
He said the 1918 influenza epidemic which killed tens of millions of people was now known to have been based on a form of bird flu.
Fauci said the problem for health industry professionals was the virus can mutate a little every year, making it harder to find an effective vaccine.
Nabarro said every government now had preparedness plans, and a January donors' conference in Beijing won commitments of US$1.9 billion to help the fight.
David Stout, the head of US pharmaceuticals group GlaxoSmithKline, said the bird flu threat had been a "wake-up call."
In the meantime, UN and government officials have agreed an action plan for immediate use in case of a bird flu outbreak in humans in any country.
Nabarro said it includes support with diagnosis, treatment and medication and supplies of gowns and face masks.
Spanish Health Minister Elena Salgado, who was also at Davos, said any mass outbreak of bird flu in humans risked submerging health authorities.
She called for more provision of instant diagnostic kits. "You cannot wait 24 or 48 hours taking the samples to laboratories outside the country."
"If a pandemic really arrives and we have 100,000 people who feel they are ill, you need to know whether they are ill or not."
For Nabarro, the number one priority is educating people, many of them in rural areas or who rely on poultry for their livelihoods, on how best to spot and avoid potential infection.
RSS