UN gears up to face threat of avian infulenza pandemic Dharam Shourie United Nations, Sept 30 (PTI) Faced with warnings of an impending global pandemic of avian influenza, the United Nations has appointed a senior expert of its health agency to co ordinate worldwide response if the virus mutates making human-to-human infection possible.

Publication: PTI - The Press Trust of India Ltd.

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The virus is now decimating poultry stocks in Asia, raising the possibility of it crossing over to humans with deadly effect, it said.

Addressing a press conference hours after he was appointed by the Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday, the new coordinator David Nabarro reinforced the warnings by other experts, saying "We expect the next great influenza pandemic to come at any time now" and unveiled three-prong strategy to deal with it.

"Prevention, preparedness, response, that what we've all got to do," he said.

World Health Organization (WHO) says the highly-pathogenic avian flu virus known as H5N1 could mutate into a form which spreads easily from person to person. As humans would have no...

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