Bird flu could overwhelm strained health systems

Idrissa Sow, a senior World Health Organization official addressing a panel at the World Economic Forum on Africa, said it was vital to increase the number of laboratories capable of testing for the H5N1 virus in Africa.

South Africa has advanced laboratory facilities, but other countries have had to send samples to Europe for testing, leading to lengthy delays in diagnosis which allow more time for the virus to spread.

WHO says there have been 224 cases of avian influenza in humans, including 127 fatalities, most of them in Asia. There have been human cases so far only in Egypt and Djibouti in Africa, but Sow said that the continent must prepare for the worst.

Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso have reported the H5N1 strain of bird flu in birds. There are fears that it has spread even further than is known in Africa because monitoring is difficult on a poor continent with weak infrastructure.

Experts are concerned H5N1 could develop into a strain easily transmitted from humans to humans, sparking a human pandemic. So far, most of the human cases are believed to have originated in birds.

"This pandemic will move around the world in six months," Sow said. "We have the pandemic among birds and the human pandemic is nearly there. We are at the last step."

He said WHO was particularly concerned about the recent deaths of seven members of a single family in a small village in Indonesia -- indicating that it was human-to-human transmission. Bird flu remains hard for people to catch, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a highly contagious form that passes easily among people.

With sub Saharan Africa bearing the brunt of the AIDS epidemic, there is concern that millions of people with suppressed immune systems will be particularly vulnerable, especially in rural areas with little access to health facilities.

"The prevalence of disease is so high in sub-Saharan Africa that a pandemic of bird flu on top of that would overrun the system very quickly," said Gary Cohen, president of an American diagnostics company, BD Medical.

Even simple measures to reduce the risk of contagion, like washing hands, would be difficult given that many Africans still have no access to running water, Cohen said.

Sow urged business representatives attending the conference to prepare themselves for the eventuality of a pandemic. "We know there will be an increase in absenteeism. We know there will be a decline in productivity and disruptions in the supply chain," he said.

According to worst case scenario predictions, up to 40 million people could die in a pandemic and one could cut global economic growth by 2 percent if travel and tourism was curtailed and businesses had to order workers to stay at home to limit the risk of infection.