Researcher asks if we're ready for a bird flu pandemic

Edward O'Daly

17 October 2006: Another influenza virus pandemic is overdue, according to a visiting expert on the disease.

Ralph Tripp, director of the Center for Disease Intervention at the University of Georgia, is in Canberra as part of his ongoing collaboration with University virologist Suresh Mahalingam and gave a public talk on bird flu last week.

Dr Tripp gave a public talk on bird flu last week and will also give a more technical address to an academic audience during his two-week visit Photo: Edward O'Daly

According to Dr Tripp, whose current work on the world's preparedness for a major bird flu outbreak is funded by the US Defense Department, pandemics are historically likely to occur three times a century.

A pandemic occurs when a disease "completely changes its face", nobody has immunity to it and it is transferred rapidly from human to human, Dr Tripp exlained. The 20th century saw the devastating 1919 Spanish flu outbreak and further pandemics in 1957 and 1968.

"We are way overdue for a pandemic," he said.

The Hong Kong bird flu outbreak in 1996, when the disease made the leap to humans, and the international response to SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2003 had boosted our preparedness for a new pandemic.

While vaccines and antiviral drugs were the 'ideal' way to combat a pandemic, risk management, containment and the establishment of new treatment centres would also play an important part in a future disease response.

"We didn't have a vaccine for SARS, but we were able to confine it and we can likely do the same for pandemic flu."

We have "learned our lessons" and are closer to understanding what a vaccine will need to be effective, he added.

Dr Tripp and his colleagues are also working on better detection of the disease.

"If you can't detect a disease, you can't combat it. Current tests take up to 10 days, by that time you're either dead or you've recovered."