GENEVA, March 11 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) unveiled a new global strategy against influenza on Monday, aiming to prevent seasonal pandemic, control the spread from animals to humans, and prepare for the next influenza pandemic.
The Global Influenza Strategy for 2019-2030 is the most comprehensive and far-reaching that the WHO has ever developed for influenza, which outlines a path to protect populations every year and helps prepare for a pandemic through strengthening routine programs.
The new plan focuses on two overarching goals: developing better tools to prevent, detect, control and treat influenza, and building stronger country capacities for disease surveillance and response, prevention and control, and preparedness.
To fully implement the strategy, the WHO vows to expand partnerships to increase research, innovation and availability of new and improved global influenza tools to benefit all countries, while at the same time working closely with countries to improve their capacities to prevent and control influenza.
"With the partnerships and country-specific work we have been doing over the years, the world is better prepared than ever before for the next big outbreak, but we are still not prepared enough," said WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
"This strategy aims to get us to that point. Fundamentally, it is about preparing health systems to manage shocks, and this only happens when health systems are strong and healthy themselves."
The new WHO influenza strategy builds on the more-than-65-year-old Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, the backbone of the global alert system for influenza, and the on-going Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework, a unique access and benefit sharing system that helps sharing potentially pandemic viruses, providing access to vaccines and treatments in the event of a pandemic, and building pandemic preparedness capacities in countries.
The new plan would enable the world to be closer to reducing the impact of influenza every year and be more prepared for an influenza pandemic and other public health emergencies, the WHO said.
Latest WHO statistics show that influenza as a serious global health threat is affecting an estimated 1 billion population worldwide every year, of which 3 to 5 million were severe cases, resulting in 290,000 to 650,000 influenza-related respiratory deaths.
In an interconnected world, the next influenza pandemic is a matter of when not if, and a severe pandemic is believed by many experts to be potentially the most devastating global health event with far reaching consequences.
