Brussels, 27/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission gathered, on Tuesday in Brussels, flu experts during a conference opened by Commissioner David Byrne and to which also participated doctors, scientists, representatives from the competent national authorities, but also from industry, the WHO and patient organisations. This conference had as aim to enhance the European mobilisation against the regular winter epidemics, but also to consider tools to be established in order to rapidly respond to the emergence of a pandemic linked to a new variation of Myxovirus influenza.
We often forget, as was recalled by an expert, but flu kills. It is even responsible for a greater number of deaths than road accidents, or more than 40,000 deaths per year in the European Union. Moreover this only concerns deaths linked to the regular winter epidemics. The emergence of a new antigenic sub-type may lead to a true disaster, as shown by the pandemic of the "Spanish flu" that lead to close to 30 million deaths (1% of the world population at the time), while the first world war also caused 8 million deaths. The previous century saw two other small pandemics, recalled this expert, when stating as certain the imminent emergence of a new major phenomenon. The last major risk emerged with chicken flu, in 1997, which presented a death rate of 33% (6 persons out of 18 infected died). The pandemic was only avoided thanks to the immediate slaughter of all the chickens in Hong Kong. At present, only six Member States have established a rapid reaction plan (a plan is in the process of being prepared in two other Member States), but none of these plans contain concrete provisions with regards to the availability of vaccines and antiviral treatments. In these conditions, the recommendations from this conference should both encourage the Member States to organise a rapid response by their health system and open the way to a European plan aiming to (1) improve epidemiological monitoring both on the human level and in the veterinary sector in order to detect as rapidly as possible the emergence of new virus variants and (2) develop, with the support of the pharmaceutical industry, the availability of vaccines and anti-viral treatments.