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Geneva. Experts carrying out a world health probe said on Monday that fear and the lack of a clear severity assessment had hampered the response to the swine flu pandemic over the past year.

The issues were raised by several of the 29 experts in their inaugural meeting to examine the controversial response to the first flu pandemic of the 21st century.

“We want to know what worked well. We want to know what went wrong and ideally why,” World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan told the panel of external specialists meeting in Geneva.

“We want to know what can be done better and ideally how,” she added.

Swine flu has affected 213 countries or territories since April 2009, leaving 17,700 people dead, WHO data showed.

The WHO probe was set up following accusations that the agency-led international reaction to H1N1 influenza, including a pandemic declaration last June, was overblown and possibly tainted by commercial interests.

Panel members and officials said that sporadic outbreaks of the more lethal bird flu had boosted pandemic preparations, including stronger International Health Regulations enforced in 2007 and the stockpiling of anti-viral drugs, before swine flu appeared.

Nonetheless, the 60 percent death rate for H5N1 bird flu had also raised expectations about the severity of a new pandemic virus.

Australian infectious diseases specialist John Mackenzie said that public reaction became guarded when the new H1N1 swine flu virus turned out to be far less lethal even though the WHO had declared a pandemic.

“It was to our disbenefit in a sense,” he told his colleagues.

“It wasn’t that mild when you see the number of deaths in the young, but the customer expected it to be much more severe,” said Mackenzie, who has been in volved in determining the response to the flu pandemic.

Professor Harvey Fineberg of Washington’s Institute of Medicine, who was appointed chairman of the WHO panel, said it was “a very central problem.”

Several Western countries had welcomed the WHO’s swift leadership but at the same time called for a reassessment of the flu alert phases and severity criteria, and the need for consistent and clear communications.

Kenya and India urged the panel to consider poor countries’ access to medicines and vaccines, noting that rich countries had priority on pandemic orders.

Chan promised an “independent, credible and transparent” examination by the International Health Regulations Review Committee over the next nine months, “without a straitjacket.”

Parliamentarians conducting a Council of Europe probe have criticized the transparency of decision-making and the potential influence of the pharmaceutical industry in a decision on vaccination.

 

Agence France-Presse