World not fully prepared for flu pandemic: expert

By Tan Ee Lyn

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - The world is far from being fully prepared for a flu pandemic, a leading U.S. infectious diseases expert said on Saturday, warning there were big gaps in surveillance and basic knowledge.

Experts have long warned that the H5N1 bird flu virus could trigger the next pandemic and kill millions of people if it becomes easily transmissible among humans.

"We are a long way from being fully prepared. We do not have a vaccine that will provide universal protection. We don't have surveillance in every country. We don't have control of the virus in animal reservoirs," said Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We have huge gaps in our basic understanding of influenza and what will be the trigger that allows it to move onto its next host and potentially become more transmissible to humans," she told a news conference in Kuala Lumpur on the sidelines of an infectious diseases conference.

H5N1 remains essentially a disease among birds. But while it has infected only 385 people around the world since late 2003, it has killed 243 of them, World Health Organization (WHO) figures show.

Humans have no natural immunity against it and any pandemic caused by this virus is widely expected to be catastrophic.

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Indonesia has the highest human casualties from H5N1, and the disease is now endemic in most parts of the country. The virus has infected 135 there since late 2003, killing 110.