Europe not ready for flu pandemic

By Andrew Jack in London

Published: November 11 2008 01:27

Not a single European country is adequately prepared for the threat of an influenza pandemic, a senior EU disease control official warned on Monday.

Angus Nicoll, project coordinator for influenza at the European Centres for Disease Prevention and Control, said Europe was ”probably approaching the halfway marker” and needed at least another two to three years’ work to strengthen local, national and international work.

Governments were still failing to develop adequate plans and responses to the strains that a pandemic would place on health and other essential services, and were poorly prepared for cooperation with their neighbours, he said.

Speaking at Retroscreen’s conference to mark the 90th anniversary of the 1918 ”Spanish” flu pandemic, he praised ”unprecedented” work since 2005 by EU states in preparing for a pandemic, and stressed there had not been a single death in the region despite periodic outbreaks of H5N1 in animals.

But he cautioned over declining political interest in the issue of pandemic influenza, a decade after the first human deaths linked to the H5N1 bird flu strain

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