US health secretary winds up bird flu trip to Asia
(AFP)
Updated: 2005-10-16 13:34

US Health Secretary Michael Leavitt leaves Southeast Asia Sunday after a week-long tour studying how the region has battled to contain bird flu, amid fears that a global pandemic is inevitable.

Leavitt has for the past six days held talks with health officials in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam -- the region so far worst hit by the virus and considered the most likely epicentre of any human epidemic.

After saying Friday that surveillance and transparency were the keys to preventing the global spread of the virus, Leavitt said the tour had helped his understanding of the disease in the region and how best to tackle it.

"What I gain from a trip like this are pieces of a puzzle that merge in my mind and that would be very helpful if the day comes when I have to take decisions related to the containment" of the disease, he said.

"There is a lot of unknown here... It's hard to visualise... until you see the interaction of the public health with the economic reality and the cultural norms," he added, en route to the northern town of Haiphong Saturday.

All but a handful of the 60 or so fatal human cases of the virus since the current outbreak first surfaced in late 2003 have been reported in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia.

The international scientific community fears that if the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus manages to mutate into a form that is easily transmissible between humans, then a worst case scenario could see tens of millions of people die.

Experts have repeatedly warned that any suspected cases be reported and contained immediately, to prevent the virus spreading -- something Leavitt compared to the outbreak of a forest fire.

US Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt(L) shakes hands with Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai in Hanoi. Transparency will be the key in the fight against a possible bird flu pandemic, Leavitt said in Hanoi, calling on all nations to commit to share information about the threat.[AFP]

"Every time there is a fire, there is a spark. If some people are there when the spark happens, they can simply put the fire out by smothering it with their foot," he said.

"If it allows to burn for any period of time, it can become uncontainable.

"With an avian influenza outbreak, if we can identify it quickly enough and get to the source, we can carefully contain it sparing the rest of the world from its damage," he added.

Vietnam, whose poultry production is essentially made up of family small-holdings, launched a poultry vaccination campaign across swathes of the country several weeks ago.

"The chances of getting 100 percent of them is very low but they're making substantial efforts and every time they do, they are diminishing the probability of a fatality," Leavitt said.

He suggested that levels of preparation that were not in place during pandemics such as the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, in which 20 to 40 million people died, gave authorities a distinct advantage.

"We probably have more knowledge today about H5N1 virus progress than we have ever had any time in public health history on any approaching virus," he said.

Earlier this week, he stressed that transparency was key in the fight against a possible pandemic, calling on all nations to commit to sharing information on the threat.

"In a pandemic, surveillance is our first line of defense," Leavitt told journalists in the Vietnamese capital. "Surveillance only works if transparency and timely sharing of information and a spirit of cooperation exist," he said.

"We called upon the government of Vietnam and other nations around the world to join us to an absolute commitment for cooperation and transparency," he said.

"It is becoming increasingly evident that anything other than transparency creates social, political and economical destruction," he said.

"No nation can avoid preparing for the possibility of the pandemic, whether it be caused by the H5N1 virus or by another one," Leavitt said. "It is safe to say no one is adequately prepared and we all have work to do".