Coming in the wake of the World Health Organisation's call last month for world-wide preparedness against the threatened global bird flu pandemic, it is heartening to learn that the UN agency has started building the first line of defence against it, with a major donation from a Swiss pharmaceutical giant.
This has reference to a news agency report from Geneva (August 25), pointing out that WHO has revealed that the donation by Swiss drug maker Roche its Tamiflu antiviral, which would be enough to treat three million people, could slow the spread of the outbreak among humans, especially in countries too poor to afford their own stockpile.
Following the Swiss pharmaceutical firm's announcement, WHO Director-General, Lee Jong-wook, is reported to have warned at a news conference, that "if it hits, and we are unprepared, there will be millions and millions of deaths." Viewed in the perspective of WHO's repeated, but largely unheeded, warnings for preparedness against the menacing pandemic, the Swiss firm's announcement of donation must have come as some sort of consolation to him.
This should become evident from his remarks to the effect that in the event of a flu pandemic striking, these drugs could be flown quickly to the centre of the potential threat.
It will be noted that fears of a global outbreak have deepened since the avian virus spread recently from Asia into Siberia and Kazakhstan, and that the WHO has been urging governments to buy in antiviral drugs like Tamiflu. However, it has been watching the outbreaks because all had the potential to trigger a global pandemic if the virus mutates and becomes easily transmittable between humans.
According to it, the last major flu pandemic had occurred in the late 1960s when some four million people had died and health authorities say another is long overdue. Needless to point out, in this kind of a dangerously developing situation the need of both preventive and curative drugs can hardly be over-emphasised.
However, it will be recalled that, in a meeting in Geneva in November last year, health experts and drugs companies had urged rich countries to come up with public funding, with a view to spurring development of a human vaccine against bird flu. On that occasion, the World Health Organisation's senior flu specialist, Klaus Stoehr, had revealed that the gathering of 50 top executives from pharmaceutical companies, public health regulators and government officials had agreed to boost co-operation in the matter.
But, at the same time, he had argued that private industry alone could not invest about 11 million euros, as needed in the short term, to develop a vaccine needed to inoculate six to seven billion people in an emergency.
According to him, almost all the human bird flu victims in Hong Kong, Thailand and Vietnam had fallen ill after direct contact with sick chickens. With the illness now endemic in poultry farms, experts have expressed the fear it will only be a matter of time before the disease mutates into a form that can leap between humans and sweep through populations with no immunity.
However, the WHO official revealed that two American and a Japanese firm were working on a vaccine against H5N1. But he had cautioned against thinking that vaccines were a cure-all.
Though conceding that they may be useful in reducing the scale of a pandemic, they were no magic means of averting a pandemic. Again, due to commercial reasons, mass production of vaccines could only start after a pandemic begins, thus pointing to the grim prospect of it reaching the public after a time-lag of, at least, five to six months. Now that drug companies are currently working on a vaccine against H5N1, in the meantime the WHO says antiviral drugs are the best option and recommends governments stockpile inhibitors - the class of drugs to which Tamiflu belongs.
Viewed in the perspective of fears and hopes around the threatened flu pandemic, the evident apathy of the Pakistan government in the matter will appear to be a cause of public concern, the government would do well to address without any loss of time.
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