WASHINGTON: Delegates from 80 nations and international agencies began a meeting on Thursday (local time) to formulate the best way to fight the growing outbreak of avian influenza before it can cause a human pandemic that could kill millions.

"The world is clearly unprepared, or inadequately prepared, for a pandemic of H5N1 influenza," US Health and Human Services Secretary (HSS) Mike Leavitt told the meeting.

Everyone at the meeting has agreed in principle to share information quickly to allow health experts to contain the virus if it makes the jump to easily infect people.

Now, said officials, it is critical to make sure they actually do so.

"Speed is life," said a Health and Human Services Department official, who asked not to be named. "With proper co-ordination, we might be able to intervene in time."

The officials did not specifically say if other countries and the World Health Organization would share scarce drugs to treat influenza and vaccines if a human epidemic breaks out.

But they hinted strongly that such help would not be available if a country has an outbreak and does not immediately report it.

"We must share epidemiological data and samples with one another," the HHS official said. "Without that kind of early co-operation, we will pull back to the next firebreak because we will have to begin to protect ourselves."

The H5N1 avian influenza virus has killed or forced the destruction of tens of millions of birds and infected more than 100 people, killing at least 60 in four Asian nations since late 2003.

Fearful of mutations

Scientists fear the virus will mutate so that it is able to be easily transmitted among humans, triggering a pandemic that could kill millions and even tens of millions in a worst-case scenario.

The head of the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and WHO experts have warned that an influenza pandemic is certain to come, but there is no way to tell when.

"We are certainly overdue," Klaus Stohr the WHO's top official for influenza co-ordination, told the Infectious Disease Society of America in San Francisco.

Stohr gave a bleak assessment of governments' ability to tackle an influenza epidemic, noting stockpiles of drugs are meager, production capacity is limited and the means to track infections spotty.

"Preparedness is key," he said.

Millions have died in past influenza pandemics, the worst of which occurred in 1918 when the "Spanish flu" virus killed as many as 50 million people.

Scientists have recreated the "Spanish flu" virus to find out why it was so lethal in the hope that it may produce clues to help experts better understand the avian flu virus and how it spreads to humans, Stohr said.

The WHO has been tracking the bird flu virus, taking samples and sending them to labs to be tested for mutations.

(China Daily 10/08/2005 page3)