Few are ill-prepared for a flu pandemic...

Oct 12th, 2006

Few ready for 'imminent' flu pandemic

Flu expert Kirsty Duncan warns
Canada is ill-prepared for a flu pandemic.

By Paul Mayne

One of Canada's top scientific researchers says it's a matter of time before the emergence of a flu pandemic expected to hospitalize and kill millions around the world.

"Are we ready for another pandemic similar to the 1918 Spanish Flu?" says University of Toronto researcher Kirsty Duncan, speaking to Western researchers and students Oct. 6. "It raises a lot of questions and proposes plenty of challenges to think about."

Duncan, author of Hunting the 1918 Flu: One Scientist's Search for a Killer Virus, says while her 10-year saga of investigating the causes behind what killed more than 50 million people worldwide decades ago has answered questions, it has also raised others.

Duncan and fellow researchers went to the point of exhuming the bodies of seven young individuals killed by the 1918 pandemic in hopes of finding out more about the causes and, perhaps, future preventive measures that could be taken when it occurs again.

"Opening the boxes was akin to opening a Pandora's Box," she says. "You could re-release the virus once again should it still be alive."

It was not, but Duncan was able to take more than 100 samples from the brain, heart, kidney, liver and lungs of the deceased. She determined we may be on the brink of a similar situation today.

The current H5N1 virus, or Avian flu, has "similar genetic paths as that of 1918."

"Knowing that, we need to prepare for the future," she says. "We have a unique opportunity this time around in that we can prepare for a pandemic that is coming. The more information we have of these past viruses the more we can prepare"

Duncan says the World Health Organization and other leading scientists say a pandemic is evident, if not imminent, leading to upwards of 28 million hospitalized and between two and 50 million possible deaths.

So if an occurrence is 'imminent', why isn't there more concern around the world? Duncan says there is some concern, but nowhere near enough. Only 15 per cent of U.S. businesses have a pandemic flu plan in place, and the number is just four per cent in Canada.

"As scientists, we are sort of caught between a rock and a hard place," she says. "We can't say we're all fine and we can't say we're all going to drop like flies. We don't want to create panic or fear mongering, but the truth is somewhere in-between."

Duncan says individual preparedness for the next pandemic should include building a supply of food, water and medication - each lasting for a period of six to eight weeks.