WHO official says world edging towards
pandemic
The World Health Organisation said that the spread of H1N1 flu
in Australia, Britain, Chile, Japan and Spain has nudged the world
closer to a pandemic.
For now, the WHO's pandemic scale remains at the second-highest
level but the threshold may soon be crossed.
The Health body noted that patterns of infection in some
countries are moving from travel-related cases to more sustained
patterns of transmission within the local community.
Acting assistant director-general Keiji Fukuda said that the new
strain had caused more infections than seasonal influenza at the
start of Chile's flu season.
He added that the future impact of this infection has yet to
unfold.
Experts say it is nearly impossible to gauge how widespread the
H1N1 flu has become.
That's because many patients suffer only mild symptoms and are
not formally diagnosed, treated and documented.
And this has raised concerns about how it would spread in the
southern hemisphere.
The WHO consulted more than 30 public health experts from 23
countries on Monday about how to revamp its pandemic alert scale to
reflect both the severity of the flu and its geographic spread.
--938Live