Global pandemic could kill 900 million people

Governments and international health organizations are absolutely unprepared for a global influenza pandemic that could kill nearly a billion people, scientists warned.

Virus simulations conducted at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore up to 900 million in a few years if it began to spread tomorrow.

The researchers concluded that an invented disease, a new type of parainfluenza known as Clade X, which spreads by coughing would kill 150 million people – almost three times the population of the United Kingdom – in less than two years in the fictional situation.

The simulation was designed so that the pathogen would not be significantly more dangerous than real diseases like Sars – and illustrates the role played by governments in diseases, "says The Metro.

Simulation predicted how governments and health authorities around the world would react to a deadly infection that spreads so quickly Real health professionals took part in the experiment, including US politicians Tom Daschle and Susan Brooks, and the former director of Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, Julie Gerberding

but they could not prevent the disease from spreading.Millions of people, "making experts s & # 39; worry of the world is not ready for a deadly pandemic, "reports the Daily Mail.

Twenty months after the start of the simulated outbreak, 150 million people have died and no vaccine has occurred. has been The researchers said the pandemic would have ended with nearly 900 million deaths, or nearly 10 percent of the world's population.

Eric Toner, of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health Security, said, "We do not have the capacity to produce vaccines against a new pathogen in a few months rather than decades and we do not have the ability to produce vaccines against a new pathogen in a matter of months rather than decades. We do not have global public health capabilities that would allow us to quickly identify and control "Health systems around the world would struggle to treat large numbers of people and could fail," he said. , adding that it was "lucky", the Sars virus, which killed 10% of the population. of the 8,000 people infected in 2003, had not been more severe.

"It will happen," he warns, "but I do not know when."