WHO urges world governments to prepare for bird flu pandemic

• World Health Organization officials urged governments on Wednesday to act swiftly to control the spread of bird flu, warning that the world is in grave danger of a deadly pandemic triggered by the virus.
• The illness has killed 45 people in Asia over the past year, in cases largely traced to contact with sick birds, and experts have warned the H5N1 virus could become far deadlier if it mutates into a form that can be easily transmitted among humans.
• "We at WHO believe that the world is now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic," Dr. Shigeru Omi, the WHO's Western Pacific regional director, said Wednesday.
• Better coordination critical Speaking at the opening of a three-day bird flu conference in Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City, Omi said it is critical that the international community better coordinate its fight against the virus.
• As bird flu experts met to devise plans to combat the H5N1 virus, scientists said they lacked knowledge about whether the strain that has led to the slaughter of tens of millions of birds has the pandemic potential of the 1918 Spanish flu that killed between 20 million and 40 million people.
• "We don't know whether the virus that is currently circulating among poultry in southeast Asia, the H5N1, will eventually be able to reassert its genetic material with a human influenza virus.
• Preparedness plans urged The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is taking the threat of a possible pandemic "very seriously" and is working closely with the global health community to quickly detect any emergence of the new strain, CDC spokesperson Tom Skinner told MSNBC.com on Wednesday.
• The mortality rate among identified patients who contract the disease from chickens and ducks is about 72 percent, said Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the of the CDC.
• However, on Tuesday she downplayed an earlier report about a possible avian flu pandemic.