Sept 27, 2005: Parliament magazine
- We should be concerned, but not panic, over Bird Flu
The deaths of 6 people from Avian Influenza in Indonesia, and the news that the virus has spread to two-thirds of the country's provinces, brings into sharp focus recent efforts made in the European Parliament, Commission and Member States to plan for the unpredictable: a bird flu pandemic.
As yet it appears that the virus has not mutated into
a form able to spread from person to person. This is the big fear, and the
good news is that so far the dangerous strain of bird flu, H5N1, has shown
itself to be very slow at mutating. As long as it spreads solely through
close contact with infected birds the effect on humans is unlikely to reach
pandemic levels. However, the geographical spread of hitherto affected areas,
and the historic resilience of the flu virus, does mean that it is a matter
of when not if (although "when" might well not be any time soon). At the moment the threat of catastrophe (which captured the imagination of Europe's press over the summer when nothing was happening, and has now waned) is not great, it is the potential of the unpredictable that is worrying. The terrible events in New Orleans may have knocked bird flu off the front pages, but the failure to plan or respond adequately to Hurricane Katrina demonstrated what happens when emergency situations are handled badly.
The attendance of Commissioner Kyprianou at special meetings
of the Environment and Agriculture Committees in recent weeks to explain
the Commission's preparations has been very welcome. Getting the balance
right is extremely important but very difficult: the need for surveillance,
awareness and preparedness could easily create panic at a time when the
actual risk from bird flu remains low. While the Dutch Government felt it
necessary to put all of their poultry under cover, a decision that they
have subsequently reversed, diverging responses to the threat of a pandemic
illustrate that an attempt at a single EU-wide preparedness plan would cause
more confusion and argument than it would solve. What is clearly needed,
and what the Commission says it is facilitating, is greater cooperation
and coordination between Member States in devising, testing and evaluating
National Preparedness Plans.
Whether or not the response from the Commission, or Member
States, to a major international pandemic would be as cool, calm and collected
as the Commissioner's statements in Committee will hopefully never be put
to the test. Nonetheless the nagging question at the back of everyone's
mind is: are we really doing everything we can? While there are many good
signs, and plausible words, we are faced with, as Donald Rumsfeld put it, "known unknowns and unknown unknowns".
I asked Commissioner Kyprianou if Member States were doing
enough to stockpile vaccines. He said some were and some were not. Europe
produces 70% of the world's flu vaccine. Producers are concerned that the
lack of international agreements will provoke chaos in the event of an outbreak.
Countries with production capabilities will be put under pressure internally
to hang on to their own stocks while externally there will be a clamour
for vaccines from afflicted non-producer states. It is a disaster waiting
to happen. Even if Member States are now aware of this problem, an underlying
difficulty remains: at present there is nowhere near enough vaccine, in
the doses necessary, to vaccinate to the level that would be needed in the
event of a pandemic.
A further complication is that current vaccines are only partially
effective. No one can develop a fully effective one until the pandemic strain
of H5N1 reveals itself. That will only happen once people have started to
fall sick, and could well take up to 6 months to be ready: too long, if
there were to be an international pandemic.
The Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918 killed somewhere in the
region of 25-50 million people worldwide. SARS demonstrated the way that
air travel facilitates the dispersal of viruses around the world at a frightening
pace. As a MEP it is difficult to know what can be done.
While we should acknowledge these facts, we need not be
overwhelmed by them. We must have: national preparedness plans, fully tested
and evaluated; international agreement on how best to produce,
distribute and manage vaccine stocks; greater financial support for affected
areas of South-East Asia to stop the cycle of infection at its source. Above
all we need to explain what we are doing and why. At present there is no
simple solution to the threat of this pandemic; avoiding scare-mongering
and insisting in a measured and informed way that Governments' are held
to account will require cooperation from politicians, the public and the
media. Bird flu may not be hitting the headlines but work on how to deal with its threat has not stopped.
