Influenza Pandemic a cause for national (global) disaster
Influenza pandemics occur when a novel strain of the influenza virus emerges which spreads efficiently from human to human, causing an outbreak that covers a wide geographical area and a high proportion of the population. Such pandemics have been documented since the late 16th century. The “Spanish Flu” pandemic of 1918 to 1919 is though to have killed as many as 50 million people, while the “Asian Flu” pandemic of 1957 caused an estimated 2 million deaths. The most recent pandemic was the “Hong Kong Flu” outbreak of 1968 which is thought to have resulted in one million deaths worldwide. Intervals between past pandemics have varied between 10 and 42 years.
Since 2003 Asia has experienced outbreaks of new, highly infectious and deadly diseases, most notably Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and the H5N1 strain of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), which has increasingly crossed the barrier from animals to humans, and has the potential of mutating into a pandemic influenza virus. SARS caused approximately 8000 cases, with a fatality rate of just under 10%. So far there have been approximately 200 cases of the H5N1 strain of HPAI, with a fatality rate of over 50% (and in some countries reaching 80%). The economic impact of both diseases, despite the relatively low number of cases, has been enormous, resulting in catastrophic losses for many countries.
Thanks to huge investments of money and human resources, and some fortunate circumstances, SARS was quickly identified as a new and potentially disastrous threat and contained within a short space of time. H5N1, on the other hand, has now spread from Asia to many countries on different continents, although it has not yet mutated into the feared pandemic virus.
In any case it has become clear that infectious diseases affect far more than the health and lives of many people. They can cause significant economic losses and, if appearing in the form of an acute outbreak that cannot be safely and quickly contained, have the potential of seriously disrupting essential services and critical infrastructures, causing national, regional or even global disasters.
OCHA-ROAP: addressing the new challenges
As a consequence, it needs to be realized that infectious diseases are not always mere health problems to be dealt with by health ministries. Sooner or later large scale disasters will be caused by an infectious disease, which will require a coordinated response from many governmental sectors and the support of the humanitarian community as a whole. Thus, the humanitarian community has to recognise that it cannot focus exclusively on natural disasters and complex emergencies, but that it is unavoidable to include infectious diseases into their scope of future work with regards to capacity and preparedness assessment, contingency planning and response coordination.
OCHA has taken on its responsibility to support preparing the UN system to be ready to respond to such a disaster and to assist governments in the region to prepare for it. While agencies such as FAO, WHO and UNICEF provide support to the animal and human health issues and communication matters, OCHA focuses on coordination of humanitarian response during a pandemic and on contingency planning within the UN system and in non health sectors of the governments, assuring the functioning and continuity of essential services.
Within the OCHA Regional Office in Bangkok an Avian and Human Influenza Unit has been established. The Unit includes a Senior Regional Pandemic Preparedness Planning Officer, a national Humanitarian Affairs Analyst, a national Information Management Officer and a general administrative staff member and two staff members from the office of the UN System Influenza Coordinator and a consultant funded by the Asian Development Bank.