Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Rome (Fides Service) - Yesterday in Geneva the 192 member countries of the World Health Organisation WHO approved a new set of International Health Regulations to manage public health emergencies of international concern such SARS, Ebola and avian influenza. The new rules will "prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease."
The new regulations have been approved while there is growing alarm for an unprecedented spread of bird flu in various parts of Asia and concern that the virus may change and produce a new flu virus which could affect humans and cause a pandemic.
In fact the virus H5N1 in circulation in Asia appears to have changed: on the one hand it may have changed at the molecule level on the other it may have become resistant to one of the anti-viral medicines used to fight it. However the experts regard new facts with great prudence and some with considerable reserve.
The WHO report says the virus could have undergone transformation to render the infection transmittable. The changes may concern the area the virus uses to adhere to the walls of the cell it prepares to invade. The report also says that the virus has become more resistant to oseltamivir an antiviral medicine known to be effective against virus H5N1 and today considered a first choice medicine in all national programmes to prevent and restrict the infection. But at the moment these are only preliminary observations and they require, according to the experts, ulterior verification.
How attention must be kept high considering that the form of avian flu which started at the end of 2003 in Asia is the most widespread ever identified in the world. From mid-December there was a reverse tendency with the appearance of first cases in humans in Cambodia and an increase of cases in a northern region of Vietnam and in Thailand.
Unless it is kept under control, this influenza could cause a pandemic of catastrophic consequences. The feared scenario is that virus H5N1, the most lethal type of avian flu, combined with common flu could give rise to an agent as virulent as the former and with the same ability to be transmitted to humans as the latter. (AP) (24/5/2005 Agenzia Fides; Righe:34 Parole:400)
