UNITED NATIONS, May 4 (UPI) -- The U.N.'s top coordinator for bird flu is calling for more national plans to tackle the possibility of a human influenza pandemic.
Recognizing Washington's recent publication of a "National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza" implementation plan, Dr. David Nabarro told reporters at U.N. World Headquarters in New York Thursday that more governments need to make similar moves.
It "is a very valuable document, as are the others that we've seen," the U.N.'s coordinator for avian and human influenza said. The plans "are advancing our collective knowledge on how to do this work."
Nabarro said since the beginning of this year bird flu has "spread quite dramatically" to 30 more countries. Before Jan. 1, only 15 countries had reported fowl with avian flu.
He emphasized the difficulties African countries face in dealing with bird flu, including the need for more cash to help fight the disease.
"As well as looking at the issues of avian influenza and dealing with the human cases of avian influenza, I am also working very closely with the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization and other parts of the United Nations on ways to reduce the risk of a human pandemic and to improve the capacity of countries to plan for pandemic if it were to come," Nabarro said.
"Now, planning for a pandemic is pretty difficult because you don't know when it's going to happen, where it's going to happen, who's going to be affected; there's a lot of unknowns but at the same time the potential threat of a pandemic is so dramatic if it was to come that it would be wrong for any country not to be giving emphasis to pandemic planning."
