[Pepper]

by Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com

December 3, 2004

The often-melodramatic World Health Organization (WHO) is ringing alarms that bird flu will trigger an international pandemic that could kill up to seven million people.

One month before Christmas, WHO issued a press release saying that the influenza pandemic could occur anywhere from next week to the coming years.

With a human vaccine for the bird flu virus not expected until March 2005 at the earliest, urgency is being placed on containment.

According to WHO Pooh-Bahs, two to seven million people will die.

"The number of people affected will go beyond billions because between 25 percent and 30 percent will fall ill," predicts Who’s Dr. Klaus Stohr.

Before duck hunters converge on the marshes, WHO has resorted to the release of information bordering on hysteria before.

It was WHO, the health arm of the United Nations who in the SARS scare blacklisted the City of Toronto as a point of destination in the summer of 2003.

Although the disease only affected those who had some connection to certain Toronto hospitals, worldwide media snatched up the story, and made it seem like a trip to Toronto would result in almost certain death. The WHO’s SARS scare all but crippled the economy of Toronto, whose losses in the tourist, hotel and dining industries are still being felt a year and a half later.

Although he’s saying that "an influenza pandemic will spare nobody" and that "every country will be affected", Dr. Bjorn Melgaard, head of WHO’s Southeast Asia office, says it is the countries with the weakest health systems in need of most support.

"Usually it’s together the poorest countries who have the least resources to invest in health," Melgaard said.

Tall talk for a representative of an organization that takes a somewhat callous view of malaria.

Every year, up to 300 million Africans get malaria; and every year up to two million of those affected, die.

Yet until mid-2004, the WHO, UNICEF and USAID, all UN agencies provided anti-malarial drugs to third world countries that they knew for years fail as much as 80 percent.

WHO and other UN health agencies ban the use of DDT on politically correct grounds.

The vaccines of world-renowned doctors have been kept on ice because of bureaucratic foul-ups with WHO.

"South African and other countries have proven beyond doubt that using DDT in conjunction with modern artemisinin drugs slashes malaria and death rates by 90 percent or more," says Paul Driessen, senior policy advisor for the Congress of Racial Equality, senior fellow with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power Black Death.

Whose ears are shut to the victims of diseases like malaria in third world countries.

"I lost my son, two sisters and two nephews to Malaria," says Ugandan businesswoman Fiona Kobusingye.

"Don’ talk to me about birds. And don’t tell me a little DDT in our bodies is worse than the risk of losing more children to this disease. African mothers would be overjoyed if that were their biggest worry."

There have been three pandemics in the 20th century, all spread worldwide within a year of being detected.

The most deadly was the Spanish flu in 1918-19, thought to have killed as many as 50 million people, nearly half of them young, healthy adults.

"During the last 36 years, there has been no pandemic, and there is a conclusion now that we are closer to the next pandemic than we have ever been before," Stohr warns.

Alarm bells, pressed by WHO doctors are almost as frightening as diseases borne by winged creatures.

http://www.torontofreepress.com/2004/cover120304.htm

[CanadaSue]

Agreed - the WHO can be melodramatic & that's frsutrating for everybody. Bear in mind that their various areas dealing with different disease threats are usually run as separate entities. Flu is not exactly sexy & it's hard for the WHO Flu Folks to get attention. The author of this article - I've seen her work before has a problem with the WHO - yes, she's Toronto based & yes, Toronto got economically zorched during the SARS scare.

But let's give the WHO a bit of slack, SARS exploded out of nowhere & the first we officially heard of it, it had appeared in a Vietnamese emergency room & a LOT of emerg staff had gone down - some were extremely ill quite quickly & some died. All we knew was what it wasn't. When you have something respiratory, can't diagnose it & health care workers start dropping believe me, you put out the stiffest warnings you can. I remember reading those as they came across the ProMed site & not hours later, out came the reports of the sick family from Toronto. I live 'just up the road', okay? Things like this "don't happen in Canada" & it was worrying. Toronto wasn't the only place hit but it was certainly 'non-Asian' & people here went down fast.

We knew NOTHING about SARS & what was the WHO to do? Breezily announce: "Carry on folks, nothing to worry about here..."? Get real - we didn't KNOW what it was, who was susceptible & what the fatality rate would ultimately end up being. We DID find out damned fast that even the strictest isolation in hospital didn't prevent infection & over a year later we still have medical types too disabled to work. Try telling THEM the WHO over reacted.

It was the MEDIA who made a trip to Toronto seem like guaranteed coffin planning time, NOT the WHO. They do not control the press. Frankly, without information about the disease, its causative organsim, etc. you couldn't have paid me to go to Toronto & every hospital in the province went on alert. We're damned lucky in retrospect that SARS wasn't more eaily caught because there were plenty of lapses in hospital screenings.

SARS pointed out some staggering gaps in even basic communications between afencies here & guss what? Huge problems remain & frnakly I don't think today we could deal with another outbreak on that scale. No way you can convince me my province is any more ready to deal with pandemic flu either than it was before SARS. And that is what the WHO is trying to beat into our heads - tomorrow for planning & prepositioning may be too late.

No, we don't know when the next flu pandemic will hit or how badly it will affect anyone. Yes, it will start in third world nations, most likely. And no matter what the has or hasn't done about other illnesses, there is NOTHING they can dso to prevent or mitigate influenza outbreaks - especially of new strains. Yes they're focused on containment - not because no vax will be available until Match but because that vax will prbably NOT be effective agauinst pandemic H5N1 flu.

I don't approve of the WHO stance on malaria either; the way they've caused DDT to banned in so many places. It's a tradeoff & I suspect they made the wrong one. BUt we're talking apples & oranges. THe influenza alarm bells may be early but they're valid.

And... they're valid but they're not sounding the end of the world. The WHO in this case is simply trying, (I think)< to wake the world up to the fact that flu can't be ignored.