Plagues and people: planning for pandemics

Join us as an expert reveals the threat to public health posed by bird flu. Are there lessons to be learnt from SARS?

The biggest health-scare story of 2005 was undoubtedly bird flu but exactly how great is the threat to public health? First seen to jump from birds to humans in 1997, it has ripped through poultry farms in Asia since 2004, with a 100% mortality rate. The biggest fear is that human-to-human transmission will be established, with the potential of killing millions of people world-wide. With supplies of the anti-viral drug Tamiflu® running low, is the world prepared enough? Perhaps lessons can be learned from the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak of 2003, which saw 774 deaths in its relatively short 8 month course. Just over a year after the initial warning, the World Heath Organisation declared that the chain of human-to-human transmission of SARS had been broken. So why did the virus cause such global panic and could it return as other newly-emerged viruses such as Marburg and Ebola have?

Professor Roy Anderson of Imperial College, and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence will explore epidemics of infectious diseases, looking at some of the lessons learnt from the SARS epidemic and current debate on planning for an avian flu pandemic.

Register to tell a friend about this lecture.

Comments

If you would like to comment about this lecture, please register here.

©2003-2006 Niminim Limited. Created by

Any ad revenue is entirely reinvested into the Lecture List's operating fund