Flu Pandemic Underway In Britain

Fast changing lifestyle trends and buzzing globalization are together fuelling in for a mammoth rise in potentially deadly new diseases towards which the health community is still ill-equipped, a government report warns.

While the early warning systems for spotting the emerging diseases are "poorly coordinated" and lack "vision" and "clarity", the House of Lords committee emphasized that more inputs are required to improve detection and surveillance for potential pandemics. Also, urgent improvement in rapid-response strategies is the key.

Directly accusing the World Health Organization (WHO) as "dysfunctional", the Lords intergovernmental organizations committee in its highly critical reports says that World Health Organization needs to be better organized to cope with the threats globally.

"While there has not been a pandemic since 1968, another one is inevitable,” ministers remarked ironically.

"Estimates are that the next pandemic will kill between two million and 50 million people worldwide and between 50,000 and 75,000 in the UK,” the committee reports.

"Socio-economic disruption will be massive," they added.

While the current pandemics are particularly linked to animal health, about three-quarters of newly-emerging human infections emerge from animals – and can only be detected once they have made humans ill.

"The last two pandemics – in 1958 and 1968 – were caused by relatively mild strains of influenza," authorities mark. However, the latest one is expected to carry serious consequences, especially if it comes from the H5N1 variety.

Currently, the global spread of highly pathogenic H5N1 in birds is considered a significant pandemic threat, while other H5N1 strains are known, they are significantly different from a current, highly pathogenic H5N1 strain on a genetic level, making the global spread of this new strain unprecedented, report marks.