Snowy Owl
Retired in 2010, In Memoriam
All thanks to DemfromCT at Flu Wiki
http://www.fluwikie2.com/pmwiki.php?n=Forum.FollowupOnTheLancetAsiaForum
See Anon_22′s summary
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673606686650/fulltext
The Lancet 2006; 367:1550
A reappraisal of H5N1 avian influenza Influenza viruses, while commonly known, are strangely neglected, sometimes even misunderstood. Even now, as we try to comprehend the threat of H5N1 avian influenza to human populations, we are forced to admit our ignorance about its biology and pathology. Global surveillance systems are weak. Detailed response plans to an emerging pandemic are absent.
Last week, over 500 experts in avian influenza and other emerging infectious diseases gathered in Singapore for The Lancet?s first Asia Forum. They represented 55 countries, with a particular focus on those nations that have so far suffered the greatest burden of the H5N1 virus?Vietnam (93 cases), Indonesia (32 cases), Thailand (22 cases), and China (18 cases). Indeed, this meeting coincided with China reporting its latest case in an 8-year-old girl from Sichuan province. That report took the total number of human infections to 205, with 113 deaths.
The central message emerging from our reappraisal of the dangers posed by H5N1 avian influenza is that, post-SARS, politicians and policymakers have become over-confident about how they might defeat a highly transmissible and pathogenic virus. Experts in Singapore agreed that there are few truly effective and, most importantly, no coordinated global, regional, or national preparedness plans.
The terms of engagement in this debate are utterly misleading. We talk of strategies and protocols, stockpiles and fire blankets. We convey the impression that we can detect an epidemic at its source and rapidly execute a well-planned containment response. Neither assumption is true. We complacently suggest that H5N1 poses ?challenges?, and astonishingly even offers us ?opportunities?. More dangerous rhetoric.
The idea that within a week or two of a pandemic?s initiation we could quench it by saturating a ring of at-risk population with oseltamivir, achieving 90% coverage and high compliance, and at the same time impose movement restrictions and social distancing?all this depending on the causal virus having an Ro <2?0?is simply fanciful.
Avian influenza is not a challenge. It is a predicament of extraordinary proportions. Doctors must say this loudly and repeatedly. Presently, we are largely silent.
As The Lancet wrote after the 1918 influenza pandemic, if only we had acted earlier with a ?collective health conscience?, many millions of lives could have been saved. Today, we are repeating the same mistakes of a century ago.
The Lancet
http://www.fluwikie2.com/pmwiki.php?n=Forum.FollowupOnTheLancetAsiaForum
See Anon_22′s summary
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673606686650/fulltext
The Lancet 2006; 367:1550
A reappraisal of H5N1 avian influenza Influenza viruses, while commonly known, are strangely neglected, sometimes even misunderstood. Even now, as we try to comprehend the threat of H5N1 avian influenza to human populations, we are forced to admit our ignorance about its biology and pathology. Global surveillance systems are weak. Detailed response plans to an emerging pandemic are absent.
Last week, over 500 experts in avian influenza and other emerging infectious diseases gathered in Singapore for The Lancet?s first Asia Forum. They represented 55 countries, with a particular focus on those nations that have so far suffered the greatest burden of the H5N1 virus?Vietnam (93 cases), Indonesia (32 cases), Thailand (22 cases), and China (18 cases). Indeed, this meeting coincided with China reporting its latest case in an 8-year-old girl from Sichuan province. That report took the total number of human infections to 205, with 113 deaths.
The central message emerging from our reappraisal of the dangers posed by H5N1 avian influenza is that, post-SARS, politicians and policymakers have become over-confident about how they might defeat a highly transmissible and pathogenic virus. Experts in Singapore agreed that there are few truly effective and, most importantly, no coordinated global, regional, or national preparedness plans.
The terms of engagement in this debate are utterly misleading. We talk of strategies and protocols, stockpiles and fire blankets. We convey the impression that we can detect an epidemic at its source and rapidly execute a well-planned containment response. Neither assumption is true. We complacently suggest that H5N1 poses ?challenges?, and astonishingly even offers us ?opportunities?. More dangerous rhetoric.
The idea that within a week or two of a pandemic?s initiation we could quench it by saturating a ring of at-risk population with oseltamivir, achieving 90% coverage and high compliance, and at the same time impose movement restrictions and social distancing?all this depending on the causal virus having an Ro <2?0?is simply fanciful.
Avian influenza is not a challenge. It is a predicament of extraordinary proportions. Doctors must say this loudly and repeatedly. Presently, we are largely silent.
As The Lancet wrote after the 1918 influenza pandemic, if only we had acted earlier with a ?collective health conscience?, many millions of lives could have been saved. Today, we are repeating the same mistakes of a century ago.
The Lancet