UN: World in danger of bird flu pandemic

摘要

HO CHI MINH CITY - The world is overdue an influenza pandemic and it must act swiftly to prevent one being triggered by bird flu now endemic in parts of Asia where it has killed 46 people, UN officials said. The world usually has a flu pandemic every20 or 30 years, but it has been 40 since the last one. "The world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic," Shigeru Omi, the head of the World Health Organization in Asia, said at a bird-flu conference in Vietnam, the country hardest hit by the H5N1 virus.