WHO declares swine flu pandemic
Updated
For the first time since the 1960s, the World Health Organisation has declared a global flu pandemic, and one of the factors is the big rise in the number of cases in Australia. In the past week, the number of cases in Australia has tripled to more than 1300. Worldwide, there are now nearly 30,000 cases of swine flu and 141 people have died from it.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Margaret Chan, World Health Organisation Director-General, Dr Alan Hampson, Chair of the Australia Influenza Specialist Group in Melbourne
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LAM: The World Health Organisation alert comes amid growing evidence that the virus, which originated in Mexico two months ago, is now being widely transmitted between humans in Asia and Europe, as well as the Americas. It prompted the warning of a global flu pandemic from the World Health Organisation in Geneva. This is the WHO's director-general, Margaret Chan.
CHAN: On the basis of available evidence and these expert assessments of the evidence, the scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic have been met. I have therefore decided to raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 5 to phase 6.
LAM: Phase six is the UN agency's highest alert level .. but W-H-O director-general Margaret Chan said the declaration of a pandemic should not spark panic and did not mean the death toll from swine flu would rise sharply. The H1N1 virus, appears to have been circulating undetected among pigs for years, according to American researchers. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta is not expecting widespread public anxiety in America , noting it came nearly two months after the virus was identified. U.S. health officials have already been treating the outbreak of swine flu as a pandemic, increasing the availability of anti-viral flu medicines. And so far, scientists have grown to understand that the virus is generally not much more severe than the seasonal flu. However, many specialists are warning against complacency. Dr Alan Hampson is chair of the Australia Influenza Specialist Group, in Melbourne.
HAMPSON: What we've seen overseas is that deaths have occured in high risk individuals, those people we normally define as high risk, people with underlying heart and lung disease, diabetes and things of that nature and also in pregnant women. Every year for seasonal influenza we recommend those people should be vaccinated and those people are usually able to avail themselves of a vaccine that will give them a good degree of protection. So unfortunately this year we're faced with a situation where probably a similar sort of virus to what we might see in a normal season is circulating, it's a new virus so most of the community are going to be susceptable to it and therefore there's a chance that it may spread more widely.
LAM: Australia's health ministry has already warned that there'll be a huge rise in infections. Quite how prepared is Australia's health system to handle a pandemic?
HAMPSON: I think Australia's health system is fairly well prepared for handling a pandemic, it's been planned over a long period of time. But in planning you can never be totally prepared, you can never totally avoid the effects of influenza. And we do see on a normal season that when we do get a significant outbreak of influenza the health system does come under pressure. So my expectation would be that there is the potential for the health system to come under greater pressure than usual this year. One of the reasons for trying to keep this outbreak as contained as possible or at a low level as possible in the earlier stages is to give the chance for vaccine manufacture to proceed, and we have an assurance that influenza vaccine should start to become available in August, which is fairly late. So by everybody doing as much as they can we may well see some damping down of the infection. And so there are things that the general population can do to assist the health system by staying home and applying appropriate respiratory etiquette and the like.
