Bird Flu Death Toll Revised Downward From 150m to 7.5m, page 1

The estimated World death toll from an Avian (Bird) flu pandemic has been revised downwards to between 2.0 - 7.5 million. The WHO (World Health Organisation) believes Dr. David Nabarro's widely reported estimate of 150 million deaths is far greater than likely to occur. The WHO bases it revision on a more "reasoned position" of how the World will cope with the eventual outbreak.

news.yahoo.com
GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday 2-7.4 million deaths was a reasonable working forecast for a global influenza pandemic -- distancing itself from a top U.N. official's figure of up to 150 million.

Dr. David Nabarro, named on Thursday as the U.N. coordinator for global readiness against an outbreak, had said that the world response would determine whether a flu virus ends up killing 5 million or as many as 150 million.

The top figure, which was widely quoted in news reports, would be some three times the toll from the most lethal flu pandemic so far recorded -- the 1918-19 'Spanish flu' outbreak in which up to 50 million may have died.

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Well this relatively good news as the WHO's worst case scenario of expected deaths is 95% less than the UN's. What concerns me though is that this could force countries to dial back their work ups to combating this outbreak. If countries start thinking they've dodged a bullet and that its not going to be so bad afterall they might, ironically, make the death toll worse than 150 million!

I hope that the World takes this as encouragement to keep up their actions to combat the outbreak which is the sole reason for the downward revision.

[edit on 30/9/05 by subz]

[edit on 3-10-2005 by DJDOHBOY]