UPDATE : A very serious warning about the coming pandemic is announced publicly by the chief of the World Health Organisation and it gets very little media coverage. At least, very little in comparison to, say, the latest news about whether or not Paris Hilton will go to jail for drunk driving.
Here's WHO chief Margaret Chan speaking in Singapore on April 2 :
"The next pandemic will certainly happen..."
'We cannot let our guard down,'' Chan said. ''My advice for all member states is to maintain vigilance, to prepare for the pandemic. One thing we know for certain is that any country that is prepared will see less damage.''
Previously...
It's been tipped as a very likely possibility for almost four years now, but we just heard a radio report that appeared to be stating that a worldwide bird flu pandemic is now coming.
According to a report on Australia's 'Radio National', Margaret Chan, the chief of the World Health Organisation, told a meeting of avian influenza experts in Singapore that the world must now prepare for the bird flu pandemic.
Chan said it was no longer a possibility, but a certainty.
She urged all the governments of the world to begin, or to finalise, their preparations for the bird flu pandemic, to cope with the hundreds of millions who will need to be hospitalised, and the many millions who are expected to die.
No links up yet, as this information was taken from a radio report. We'll update when news media start running reports on the net.
You can only hope she's ramping up the hype, for whatever reason. The world, on the whole, is clearly not prepared for a repeat of, or something worse than, the 1918 pandemic, when more than 60 million people out of a worldwide population of less than one billion died.
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