Responding to the Avian Influenza Pandemic Threat: Recommended Strategic Actions
SummaryText
This document sets out activities that can be undertaken by individual countries, the international community and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to prepare the world for the next influenza pandemic and mitigate its impact once an outbreak occurs. The document also describes issues that can guide policy choices in a situation characterised by both urgency and uncertainty. Recommendations are based on different phases of a pandemic, describing strategic actions that can be undertaken to capitalise on each opportunity to intervene. Particular attention is given to the H5N1 avian inluenza (also known as avian flu or bird flu) virus.
Topics include:
As the vast majority of human cases have occurred in rural areas, advice to farmers and their families on how to avoid exposure is one way to help reduce the risk that a pandemic virus will emerge. One challenge in identifying affected poultry is that domestic ducks can excrete large quantities of the highly pathogenic virus without showing signs of illness. Secondly, an inability to adequately compensate farmers for lost birds reduces the incentive to report outbreaks, particularly in economically poor rural areas where there is the highest risk of human exposure.
The publication proposes that there is a need to intensify collaboration between the animal and public health sectors. To achieve this, the WHO will appoint dedicated staff to increase the exchange of information between agricultural and health sectors at the international level. Increased collaboration between the two sectors serves three main purposes: to pinpoint areas of disease activity in animals where vigilance for human cases should be intensified, to ensure that measures for controlling the disease in animals are compatible with reduced opportunities for human exposure; and to ensure advice reaches rural communities on protective measures.
The article also points to strengthening communication about the risks to rural residents as important to responding to the pandemic threat. WHO will, through its research networks and in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), aim to improve understanding of the links between animal disease, human behaviours, and the risk of acquiring H5N1 infection. This information will be used as the basis for risk communication to rural residents. Ongoing risk communication is needed to alert rural residents to these risks and explain how to avoid them. Better knowledge about the relationship between animal and human disease, obtained by WHO in collaboration with FAO/OIE, can be used to make present risk communication more precise and thus better able to prevent risky behaviours. Similarly, as soon as a pandemic is declared, health authorities will need to start a continuous process of risk communication to the public. Many difficult issues - the inevitable spread to all countries, the shortage of vaccines and antiviral drugs, justification for the selection of priority groups for protection - will need to be addressed. Effective risk communication, supported by confidence in government authorities and the reliability of their information, may help mitigate some of the social and economic disruption attributed to an anxious public. Countries are advised to plan in advance. A communication strategy for a pandemic situation should include training in outbreak communication and integration of communicators in senior management teams.
Click here to access the website to download this document in various languages.
Topics include:
- Situation assessment
- Reduce opportunities for human infection
- Strengthen the early warning system
- Contain or delay spread at the source
- Reduce morbidity, mortality and social disruption
- Conduct research to guide response measures
As the vast majority of human cases have occurred in rural areas, advice to farmers and their families on how to avoid exposure is one way to help reduce the risk that a pandemic virus will emerge. One challenge in identifying affected poultry is that domestic ducks can excrete large quantities of the highly pathogenic virus without showing signs of illness. Secondly, an inability to adequately compensate farmers for lost birds reduces the incentive to report outbreaks, particularly in economically poor rural areas where there is the highest risk of human exposure.
The publication proposes that there is a need to intensify collaboration between the animal and public health sectors. To achieve this, the WHO will appoint dedicated staff to increase the exchange of information between agricultural and health sectors at the international level. Increased collaboration between the two sectors serves three main purposes: to pinpoint areas of disease activity in animals where vigilance for human cases should be intensified, to ensure that measures for controlling the disease in animals are compatible with reduced opportunities for human exposure; and to ensure advice reaches rural communities on protective measures.
The article also points to strengthening communication about the risks to rural residents as important to responding to the pandemic threat. WHO will, through its research networks and in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), aim to improve understanding of the links between animal disease, human behaviours, and the risk of acquiring H5N1 infection. This information will be used as the basis for risk communication to rural residents. Ongoing risk communication is needed to alert rural residents to these risks and explain how to avoid them. Better knowledge about the relationship between animal and human disease, obtained by WHO in collaboration with FAO/OIE, can be used to make present risk communication more precise and thus better able to prevent risky behaviours. Similarly, as soon as a pandemic is declared, health authorities will need to start a continuous process of risk communication to the public. Many difficult issues - the inevitable spread to all countries, the shortage of vaccines and antiviral drugs, justification for the selection of priority groups for protection - will need to be addressed. Effective risk communication, supported by confidence in government authorities and the reliability of their information, may help mitigate some of the social and economic disruption attributed to an anxious public. Countries are advised to plan in advance. A communication strategy for a pandemic situation should include training in outbreak communication and integration of communicators in senior management teams.
Click here to access the website to download this document in various languages.
Languages
Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish
Number of Pages
22
Source
WHO website, January 28 2006.
Comments
This page defined a holistic strategic approach to the management of AI pandemic through effective infomation management management disemination and public awareness amoung the rural and public communitiesiespecially in developing countries
The report enphasised the synegistic advantage of close callaboration between the human health personnel and the veterinarian in the control of the problem . I woild equally add that a much more involvement of private initative collaborative advocacy by veterinary extension practitioners in developing countris will result in a a more rapid acceptability of prescribed biosecurity measures and beneficial education training impact for the rural community. I threfore recommend that more involvement of private sector poultry practitiones should be encouraged by international NGO .
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