Global pandemic unstoppable, warn experts at Davos summit
Experts say pandemic will happen due to international travel as world marks 100 years of Spanish flu that killed 50 million.
According to recent studies, fears of a global pandemic are mounting as experts have warned there will be ‘no way to stop’ a killer disease from claiming millions of lives.
The concerns were raised at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, exactly a century after the 1918 Spanish flu that claimed 50 million lives.
Furthermore, the H1N1 virus killed three times as many people as World War I and did it quicker than any other illness in recorded history.
Now, experts have warned another pandemic is unavoidable amid the ease of international travel.
The experts revealed at the Davos summit that a mutated flu virus poses the biggest threat because it can join together with other strains to become deadlier.
Speaking to AFP, Elhadj As Sy, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said that pandemics are becoming a real threat to humanity.
Dr Sylvie Briand, a specialist in infectious diseases at the World Health Organisation, added: 'We know that it is coming, but we have no way of stopping it.'
The pair were speaking of their concerns at a Davos discussion called 'Are We Ready For The Next Pandemic?'.
Speaking at the summit, Dr Briand added that the flu is a respiratory virus that is easily transmitted and people can be contagious even before they show symptoms, so it is not easy to control. Furthermore, he added that its numerous forms are also able to bond with viruses from birds or pigs in potentially deadly new combinations.
This process is what sparked the Swine flu pandemic of 2009 - which killed nearly 300,000 people across the world after striking around 60 countries.
The comments come after the plague outbreak in Madagascar - the most recent epidemic to receive international aid attention amid fears it would spread where more than 200 people were killed during the outbreak that ravaged the island over the winter.