Geneva – The World Health Organization moved Friday to revise alarming predictions that a pandemic stemming from the bird flu virus ravaging parts of Asia could kill as many as 150 million people.
The U.N. health agency was deluged with inquiries after Dr. David Nabarro – named Thursday as the U.N. coordinator for avian and human influenza – cited the number during a news conference at the U.N.’s New York headquarters.
While WHO’s flu spokesman at the agency’s Geneva headquarters did not say the 150 million prediction was wrong, he emphasized that 7.4 million deaths is a more realistic estimate.
Scientists have made predictions ranging from less than 2 million to 360 million. Last year, WHO’s chief for the Asia-Pacific region predicted 100 million deaths, but until now that was the highest figure publicly mentioned by a WHO official.
“We’re not going to know how lethal the next pandemic is going to be until the pandemic begins,” WHO influenza spokesman Dick Thompson said Friday.
“You could pick almost any number” until then, he said, adding that WHO “can’t be dragged into further scaremongering.”
Experts agree there will certainly be another flu pandemic – a new human flu strain that goes global. However, it is unknown when or how bad that global epidemic will be. It also is unknown whether the H5N1 bird flu strain circulating in Asian poultry now will be the origin of the next pandemic. But experts are tracking it just in case, and governments across the world are preparing themselves for such a possibility. Two factors will have an influence on how many people will die from the next pandemic, experts say. One is the attack rate – the proportion of the population that become infected. The other is the death rate, or the proportion of the sick who die. Normal seasonal viruses have an attack rate of between 5 and 20 percent, but a death rate of less than 1 percent.
