Flu pandemic WARNING: Outbreak is INEVITABLE – ‘not a question of if, but WHEN’
A DOCTOR who specialises in emerging infectious diseases has warned it is “not a question of if, but when” the world is hit by another global influenza pandemic – and has issued a warning about other diseases including Ebola and drug-resistant bugs.
By CIARAN MCGRATH
Express.co.uk
Wed, Aug 22, 2018
Dr Rima Khabbaz, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID), a division of the US-based Center for Disease Control (CDC), made her remarks as she prepares for the 2018 International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases, which is being organised by the CDC in Atlanta, starting on Saturday.
She told Express.co.uk: “Influenza is top of the list of threats.
“We are not talking about one virus, but a series of viruses.
“We have something which is constantly jumping from animals to people.”
A century on from the Spanish flu outbreak which claimed the lives of between 50 and 100 million worldwide, Dr Khabbaz stressed the importance of being prepared for the danger influenza represented.
Dr Khabbaz said: “It’s a pandemic virus and it’s not a question of if, but when there will be another flu pandemic.”
However, she also stressed that advances in anti-viral treatments and other drug technologies meant the medical community was better equipped to cope now than it was 100 years ago with an outbreak.
Dr Khabbaz identified retroviruses such as Ebola as major threats in the coming years few years.
She pointed to recent outbreaks including the latest in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the tenth in the country in the last 40 years.
And she highlighted the risk posed by bacterial and fungal infections which are increasingly resistant to medication.
Dr Khabbaz said: “Antibiotic-resistance is a huge problem.
“It really is threatening medicine as we know it.”
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