(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-11-18 10:07

NERVE CENTRE

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last month toured the war room, where he was briefed by officials.

"This is our nerve-centre. We have voice, video, Internet and satellite tracking so that we can be on the ground virtually alongside our member states," Lee told Annan.

The WHO's Global Alert and Outbreak Response Network has deployed 500 experts to 50 outbreaks in 40 countries since 2001, according to Margaret Chan, assistant director-general for communicable diseases.

"When you're facing a major outbreak, no single institution or country can handle it. This is a cost-effective system to provide rapid response on the ground," said Chan, former head of Hong Kong's health department and WHO's top pandemic expert.

A health worker vaccinates a hen in Feixi county, east China's Anhui province November 16, 2005.[Reuters]

As part of its arsenal, the WHO uses an Internet-based early-warning system developed by Canada's health ministry which scours 30,000 news sources, picking up rumours of outbreaks.

"The median time from finding out an event and verifying it is 24-48 hours. We've become very fleet of foot," Ryan said.

WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

The WHO currently ranks bird flu at phase three on a scale of six, meaning there is no or very limited human-to-human transmission. Phase six is the start of a pandemic.

Ryan said that if several people without an obvious link to infected poultry developed the disease in the same village, it could be the sign of a cluster of infections.

This would flag increased human-to-human transmission and trigger phase 4, when the centre would urgently trace victims' contacts and step up containment measures.

"There may be a window of opportunity ... We may have the opportunity to apply control measures, including use of antivirals, but we have to be very fleet of foot," Ryan said.

"Certainly in Vietnam there were some tense moments when we were wondering whether we were seeing the beginning," he added.

He was referring to preliminary confidential scientific reports in May suggesting there may have been more widespread infection in the general population. This proved to be a false alarm in June, but WHO officials refer to it as the "dry run".

Ryan said a pandemic would place a "huge demand" on the WHO.

"Are we ready for a pandemic? No, we are not," he declared.

But the WHO is investing another $2 million to beef up a global IT infrastructure to be used in crises, officials said.

"If a pandemic were declared tomorrow, we would have to look at the resilience of our Web site because we are going to get millions of hits in the first minutes," Ryan said.

The current network, linking headquarters to regional and country offices in 66 countries, has big gaps in Asia.

"We need to increase the number of countries connected, particularly those countries at risk of avian flu. We need to accelerate their connectivity so we have protected bandwidth," Ryan said.

"The last thing I want to be doing is competing for a telephone line to China or Vietnam in the middle of a crisis."

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