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The Plan = They Have Three Weeks
or else, stick a lollypop on your ass so you can kiss it good bye
WHO H5N1 Outbreak
Containment Plans Announced
- The first measures thought to
be capable of containing a global flu outbreak have been agreed by
the World Health Organization (WHO), a leading British scientist
said yesterday Tue 21 Mar 2006
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- The plan makes it clear that
there would be a window of opportunity of only around 3 weeks
after an outbreak to prevent a pandemic that could sicken 20 per
cent of the global population and put 30 million people in
hospital, of whom around 20 per cent could die.
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- Two computer models of an
outbreak, one by Prof Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London,
demonstrated in 2005 that early antiviral treatment would be
critical if H5N1 began to spread between people. In the past few
days the WHO has published its first recommendations on how to
carry out the plan.
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- "This is remarkable,"
Professor Ferguson said yesterday. "This is the first time it has
even been thought a possibility." The plan, or protocol, which was
drawn up by more than 70 international experts and WHO staff,
suggests for the first time that it may be possible "to alter the
natural course of a pandemic near its start".
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- By May [2006] the WHO will
have a stockpile of 3 million courses of the antiviral drug
oseltamivir in warehouses in America and Switzerland, after
donations from industry. The modeling studies suggest that the
mass administration of antiviral drugs must begin within 21 days
after the detection of the first case, which would represent
improved human-to-human transmission of the virus.
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- The meeting agreed a point
that would mark the start of a pandemic: "3 or more persons with
unexplained moderate-to-severe acute respiratory illness (or who
died of an unexplained acute respiratory illness) and with onset
of illness within seven to 10 days of each other and with a
history strongly suggesting potential exposure to the H5N1 virus."
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- 2 types of changes to the
virus would be considered causes for concern: detection of a virus
with new features, for example a "reassortant" virus containing
both human and avian genetic material, or the isolation of a virus
from a human case showing a number of mutations not seen in the
avian strains.
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- The national health authority
should notify the WHO "immediately following detection of a
credible signal". If the WHO agreed that this were a potential
pandemic, a range of logistical measures and tests would be
carried out along with control measures, notably the use of
antiviral, quarantine and hygiene measures.
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- But the document said that it
would not be able to contain the pandemic if the number or
geographical distribution of the affected people were too large at
the time of detection, exceeded supplies of antiviral or the
capacity of medical and emergency services, or if more than 4-6
weeks had passed since the detection of the initial cluster.
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- Source -
Roger Highfield
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