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Avian Flu

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, for asking Her Majesty’s Government whether adequate safeguards are in place to deal with a potential outbreak of avian flu. The disease, which has attracted wide public attention through the media, has caused confusion, as other noble Lords have mentioned. There are clearly two separate issues involved in avian flu. First, there is an avian flu epidemic of the H5N1 strain in east and south-east Asia. It has now spread to Russia and Kazakhstan. Infected birds have also been identified here. Secondly, the World Health Organisation has advised countries on the preparations necessary to prepare for an influenza pandemic. The latest UK influenza pandemic contingency plan of October 2005 states that the widespread occurrence and continued spread of a highly pathogenic avian (bird) influenza virus H5N1 in poultry in south-east Asia since 2003 has increased concern that this could provide the seedbed for the emergence of a new human influenza virus with pandemic potential. I suppose that newspapers would like to expand such reports in portraying what they consider is a likely future scenario. However, at the moment such a scenario is fictional. There is no doubt that H5N1 is a virulent infection of birds that has spread. As the noble Lord, Lord Soulsby, said, avian flu is nothing new. China has had recurrent epidemics over 10 years, but it is only since the resurgence of avian flu with H5N1 in 2003 that the spread has been so rapid and that there have been a small number of human deaths. Today, there are 70 proven cases of deaths from the avian flu virus H5N1, and all of them have occurred in China and the south-east Asian countries of Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia. Currently, poultry are susceptible to infection by avian flu; we know that from all the experiences of south-east Asian countries. Serious effects would occur on poultry farming if avian flu were to infect our national stock of birds. I look forward to the Minister telling us what will be done and what plans there are for handling such a possibility. I have found at least two documents on pandemic flu, but I have not found any documents on avian flu advice for poultry farmers of the type that have been produced for the NHS. It has also been said that a vaccine has been manufactured for use in poultry in China. I was in China two weeks ago and yes, it is true that they have manufactured a vaccine. However, the problem is that the vaccine takes three weeks to produce any immunity, and every bird has to be injected individually. It will be an impossibly long and laborious process for the team that is going to vaccinate the birds. So although the vaccine has been manufactured and is being used and publicised, it is unlikely that the current vaccine would have any impact or use for us here. I will now consider the aspects of human infection and the prospect of an influenza pandemic of H5N1. The Department of Health should be congratulated for making detailed plans, first in March and then again in October using WHO recommendations on how to deal with the pandemic. Using statistics, since the last influenza pandemic was from Hong Kong in 1968, it is about time that another should occur in Europe. That is good planning and it should not cause unnecessary fear and alarm in the public—although unfortunately it has. The President of China on his visit here last week voiced his concern about avian flu and asked for our Government’s help on research and co-operation on the public health effects of avian flu. There is no doubt that this is an area where we hope that the Government will join in co-operation. The report on the first three proven cases of human avian flu from China was in the Times this morning. They were two siblings and another girl from another province in China. All three of them apparently had H5N1 identified in their secretions. Of the two siblings, the girl died but her brother survived although they both had the same illness. That seems to be good news, if it is true, because it might lead to work on some way of having immunoglobulins or even a vaccine that might be produced for human use. I come back to our own preparations for pandemic flu. Could there be better information for the public than the large tomes produced? In the SARS epidemic, there was tremendous confusion, particularly among the Chinese community, when people stopped going to Chinese restaurants. They then tuned on to Hong Kong television and saw that everyone was wearing facemasks, so they adopted the same procedure here and started telling people that they should not go to public places, not even churches. I hope that, to avoid such confusion, we would produce a user-friendly information sheet.