WHO Considers Revising Definition of “Pandemic”
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May 23, 2009 by fluoutbreak
Responding to mounting confusion, the World Health Organization (WHO) has sent the definition of a full-scale, phase 6 influenza “pandemic” to the rewrite desk. But no formal revisions have been made yet, leaving the old definition in place, and that says a phase 6 alert should be triggered if two regions of the world have sustained community spread in humans of an animal or animal-human hybrid of a flu virus.
On 29 April, WHO raised the pandemic threat level from 4 to 5, citing sustained community transmission in the U.S. and Mexico. At the same time, WHO said phase 6 was “imminent” and would be declared if the same type of spread appeared in a second region of the world. But at a press conference today, Keiji Fukuda, WHO’s assistant director-general, said that representatives from several countries who attended the World Health Assembly in Geneva this week criticized the current phasing system, which relies solely on geographic spread without regard to severity of disease.
Fukuda said WHO agreed with the countries that the phase system needs to more accurately reflect the impact the virus is having on populations. Fukuda also said WHO might bump up the alert to phase 6 if the virus started to spread significantly in the Southern Hemisphere, including South America and Africa, even without causing severe disease.
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