Canada and the World
Current Events with a Canadian Perspective
Last update
19 November 2010
Global Influenza Pandemics
Planners say it’s not a question of if but when
the next global influenza pandemic will happen
A flu pandemic occurs when a new influenza virus emerges for which people have little
or no immunity, and for which there is no vaccine. The disease spreads easily person-
Swine Flu Pandemic
Early in 2009, the World Health Organization raised an alert about an oncoming flu pandemic. The H1N1 virus, otherwise known as swine flu, was on the loose and set to create havoc around the globe.
Jorge R. Mancillas, a neurobiologist who works for Public Services International, an international federation of public service unions was alarmed.
Writing in The Washington Post (August 2009), Mancillas said, “The…pandemic is now unstoppable.”
On July 30, 2009, Public Services International reported the number of countries
reporting cases of swine flu had “reached 168 according to the WHO and 210 according
to the BBC. While most cases are now escaping detection, the number of confirmed
cases is reported at 162,380 with 1,154 deaths directly attributable to Influenza
A (H1N1) infection.”
Doom and gloom predictions of millions of dead abounded. There were vaccine shortages,
long line-
As the Voice of America reported (January 2010) “The World Health Organization says
the latest estimate indicates 13,000 people around the world have died from H1N1.
It says it expects that number to be much larger when the final estimate is released
in the coming months. In comparison, the seasonal flu kills about 36,000 people each
year in the United States.”
Influenza Pandemics Rare
The dire predictions were that swine flu had the potential to cause massive casualties on the scale of earlier outbreaks.
The good news is that influenza pandemics with massive death tolls are rare, but when they surface they’re horrendous. Of the three that have hit in the last century, Spanish influenza in 1918 was by far the worst. Considered one of the deadliest disease events in human history, it killed about 40 to 50 million people worldwide.
The Spanish flu killed more people than World War I, which cost 19 million lives.
More Pandemic Outbreaks
The Asian influenza in 1957, and Hong Kong flu in 1968, were milder than the Spanish Flu but still caused two million and one million deaths respectively.
Two of the most recent pandemic scares occurred in 1997 and 1999. In 1997, at least a few hundred people were infected with the avian H5N1 flu virus in Hong Kong. Eighteen people were hospitalized and six of them died.
This virus was different because it moved directly from chickens to people, rather than having been altered by infecting pigs as an intermediate host. In addition, many of the most severe illnesses occurred in young adults, just as the Spanish flu of 1918 had done.
To prevent the spread of this virus, all chickens (approximately 1.5 million) in Hong Kong were slaughtered. Fortunately, the avian flu did not easily spread from one person to another. After the poultry were slaughtered, no new human infections were found.
In 2005, The World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the world may be on the brink of another pandemic. WHO said health experts had been monitoring the deadly H5N1 strain for almost eight years.
From 2003 to 2005 more than 100 human cases were confirmed in four Asian countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam), and more than half of these people died.
Again, most cases involved previously healthy children and young adults. Up to that point the strain was not as contagious as normal flu, but if that changes experts say a pandemic could follow. So far, the reported death rate of this virus is 50 percent.
When a contagious virus emerges, WHO says it’s only a matter of time before it spreads around the globe. Even measures such as border closures and travel restrictions only delay it.
The pandemics of the previous century circled the globe in six to nine months, even when most international travel was by ship. Given the speed and volume of international air travel today, the virus could spread more rapidly, possibly reaching all continents in less than 3 months.
Pandemic Stretch Resources to Breaking Point
Few countries have the staff, facilities, equipment, and hospital beds needed to cope with large numbers of people who suddenly fall ill.
Supplies of vaccines and antiviral drugs – the two most important methods of reducing illness and deaths during a pandemic – will be inadequate in all countries at the start of a pandemic and for many months thereafter.
Here’s how Gwynne Dyer described the potential scenario for another pandemic in The Walrus magazine (February 2006): “For many months there would be no vaccine, and panic would spread as people fell ill literally from one hour to the next. Schools, theatres, even churches would be closed, and most public transport as well – anything to reduce the virus’s opportunities to infect new victims. Absenteeism at work would soar, with many people staying in their homes and avoiding even their neighbours. The few people on the streets would be wearing surgical masks. Ordinary retail business would practically cease. All of these things happened in Canada in 1918.”
Image credits
Guerry
Library of Congress
“Complacency Bolster Bolsters a Pandemic.” Jorge R. Mancillas, Washington Post, August 1, 2009.
“H1N1 Reality Far Lower than Expectations, says British Medical Journal.” Voice of America, January 15, 2010.
“Waiting for the Pandemic.” Gwynne Dyer, The Walrus, February 2006.
© Canada and the World, October 2007
Updated July 2010
All rights reserved
Immunization Awareness & Promotion
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Health Canada Pandemic Preparedness
Public Health Agency of Canada
The Economist reports that most of the world’s flu vaccine is produced in nine countries: Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States. Europe produces 70 percent of the vaccines, but producers there are worried that without international agreements now, there is a high risk of inadequate, inequitable, and delayed supplies of vaccines.
About 20 to 40 percent of the worldwide population became ill during the Spanish influenza pandemic in 1918. Adults 20 to 50 years old were the hardest hit. The severity of that virus has not been seen again.
In August 2007, The New York Times reported that a highly infectious swine virus was sweeping China’s pig population. The deadly virus had spread to 25 of the country’s 33 provinces and regions.
The Chinese government acknowledged that the virus had devastated pig stocks in coastal
and southern areas, and experts said it was rapidly moving inland and westward, to
areas such as one in Sichuan Province, China’s largest pork-
No one knows for sure how many of this country’s 500 million pigs have been infected. The government says officially that about 165,000 pigs have contracted the virus this year. But in a country that, on average, loses 25 million pigs a year to disease, few believe the figures. And, there were no clear indications if the disease posed a health hazard to humans.