The WHO said yesterday that it was examining its response to the swine flu outbreak in Mexico following accusations that the UN agency reacted too slowly.
Spokesman Thomas Abrahams said WHO headquarters was informed by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) about the emergence of a new flu virus early on April 24.
“There are cases of influenza all the time, but once we knew that this illness was cause by a new influenza virus ... we moved into operation within a matter of hours,” he told journalists.
“One of the things we are doing internally is documenting everything we have done, when we did it and how we have done it,” Abrahams said.
Media reports said there was a delay of eight days in the WHO's response to swine flu, now termed Influenza A (H1NI) by the WHO.
Mexican health officials notified the WHO's Washington-based regional branch, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), on April 16 of a possibly brewing epidemic, according to the Washington Post's Web site.
A US biosurveillance firm, Veratect, said on its Web site that its tracking reports of atypical pneumonia and respiratory disease in Mexico early last month were made available to the WHO.
Abrahams said: “On Friday [April] 24, I think we were informed early in the morning. Immediately after that our strategic operations center went into action.”
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍), who was on an official trip to Washington, met US and Mexican officials and went to PAHO, then flew back to Geneva the next day.
“By Saturday evening she was making a public statement here saying we had a potential pandemic virus. I think this is a pretty rapid response,” Abrahams said.
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