Proximity to a disease is a sure and certain stimulus for alarm, awareness and preparedness to take precautionary measures against it.
Europeans have reached this stage with avian influenza, now that it is firmly established in eastern Turkey, having started in south-east Asia two years ago. Governments and international organisations throughout Europe must now discourage alarm, stimulate awareness of the dangers involved and redouble their preparations for the spread of the disease.
The most grave and worrying possibility is that the H5N1 virus responsible for it could mutate in such a way that it would cross-infect humans rather than being carried from birds to humans, which is how the estimated 147 infections and 78 deaths around the world have happened so far. Humans have no immunity against the H5 antigen, which means that a lethal pandemic could occur if that mutation does take place.
The disease has now reached near pandemic levels among domestic and wild birds in parts of Vietnam, Thailand, China and Indonesia. It has spread in Turkey over the last three months since first reported there on October 8th, following similar outbreaks in Ukraine and Romania. Only in Turkey have there been so many human casualties, all of them among people having close and intimate contact with domestic fowl. Most of the victims are subsistence farmers for whom this is part and parcel of their everyday economy, just as in Ireland until a couple of generations ago. Understandably there is resistance by farmers to the necessary measures, and reluctance to take them by public authorities.
Already millions of southeast Asian farmers have seen their livelihoods cut from under them by mass cullings. Their sacrifice must be remembered as more developed peoples come to terms with this threat. Should a viral mutation occur the people most at risk will be the poorest of the poor, especially those who live in the huge new Third World cities thrown up by rapid urbanisation throughout Asia and Africa. They would be the last to receive vaccines, which even the richest countries are having difficulty securing and stockpiling because of limited production facilities. Thus this potential threat highlights many of the major social and economic forces at play in a rapidly changing world.
Ireland, too, must prepare for this danger. The Government and its agencies have made considerable progress with contingency planning for an outbreak of avian influenza by registering domestic and producer flocks, and warning people about travel and hygiene. More can and should be done now that public awareness of the dangers has suddenly increased. Preparations for a possible human pandemic are also in hand, overseen by a Cabinet committee and involving substantial stockpiling of vaccines and planning for what could be severely difficult decisions on distributing them, quarantining and treating threatened populations. We can only hope these plans will not be needed, but good preparedness will save lives.