Australia has bad reaction to British flu report
23-JUL-2008 Intellasia | Nzherald
Jul 23, 2008 - 7:00:00 AM
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Australian flu experts have dismissed as "unhelpful" a hard-hitting British report claiming the world is ill-prepared for an inevitable influenza pandemic.
The government report warns that most nations have poor early warning systems for disease spread, lack vision and clarity and are badly co-ordinated.
The World Health Organisation was also criticised in the report by the House of Lords as having a "dysfunctional organisational structure" not designed to best fight emerging diseases.
But Australian specialists say the report is both overly simplistic and overly negative in a climate in which much has been done in recent years.
The report warns of the potentially disastrous effects of conditions such as the H5N1 bird flu virus, but pandemic committee member Professor Tannock said the virus had already proven itself "very difficult to transmit between humans".
"And we in Australia are about as best prepared as we can be with vaccines and antiviral stockpiles."
But Professor Mahomed Patel, from the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, conceded there was room for improvement, especially in Third World countries.
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