World not set to deal with widespread flu - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com: "World not set to deal with widespread fluStrategy for pandemic needed, experts say

By David BrownUpdated: 3:02 a.m. ET July 31,

2005WASHINGTON - Public health officials preparing to battle what they view as an inevitable influenza pandemic say the world lacks the medical weapons to fight the disease effectively, and will not have them anytime soon.Public health specialists and manufacturers are working frantically to develop vaccines, drugs, strategies for quarantining and treating the ill, and plans for international cooperation, but these efforts will take years. Meanwhile, the most dangerous strain of influenza to appear in decades -- the H5N1 'bird flu' in Asia -- is showing up in new populations of birds, and occasionally people, almost by the month, global health officials say.If the virus were to start spreading in the next year, the world would have only a relative handful of doses of an experimental vaccine to defend against a disease that, history shows, could potentially kill millions. If the vaccine proved effective and every flu vaccine factory in the world started making it, the first doses would not be ready for four months. By then, the pathogen would probably be on every continent."