Transparency in the most unlikely of places
Scott McPherson
in Politics and government, influenza and infectious diseases
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Like most flu watchers, I was struck by the seemingly contradictory behavior of the government in Myanmar last week. Unless you live in your own universe where you are the deity, you are painfully aware of the situation regarding the military dictatorship's antipathy towards anything even remotely resembling freedom, democracy and transparency. There are even hushed rumors that in the last round of anti-government demonstrations in that country (previously known as Burma) this past September and October, hundreds -- if not thousands -- of Buddhist monks were killed and (even more horrifying), there are allegations that several injured monks were cremated alive. http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache:YDx3ElhwIqsJ:www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/10/02/myanmar-list-of-detainees-and-letter-from-a-88-generation-worker/+myanmar+government+priests+killed+2007&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us
So what can scare one of the most repressive regimes in the world into calling the World Health Organization?
Bird flu.
One can only imagine the telephone call that took place. Only Bob Newhart could do that call justice.
"W.H.O. bird flu clearinghouse Geneva. You want to report a suspected case? Where are you calling from?
"You're kidding, right? This call is from Myanmar? C'mon, who is this really?"
Anyway, a young girl came down with H5N1 bird flu last week, and before you could say "Gesundheit!" (by dictatorship standards), the Myanmar authorities had the WHO on the line . From the Miami Herald, via AP:
Myanmar reports 1st human bird flu case
The U.N. body and the country's health ministry found that a 7-year-old girl from Keng Tung in northeastern Myanmar had been infected with the deadly H5N1 virus, WHO said on its Web site Friday. She has since recovered.
The WHO hailed Myanmar's transparency and swift action in alerting outside health officials about the case. Myanmar's ruling junta has been under international fire since September for killing and arresting pro-democracy protesters, with dissident groups putting the death toll at about 200.
"They handled it very, very well," said Shima Roy, spokeswoman for the organization's regional office in New Delhi. "They actually did house-to-house surveillance, especially in the area where there had been an outbreak of avian influenza in poultry."
State media reported the girl was hospitalized on Nov. 27 and released on Dec. 12 in good condition after being treated with the antiviral drug Tamiflu.
Bird flu has recently resurfaced in parts of Asia, with human deaths reported in Indonesia and China and fresh outbreaks in poultry plaguing other countries during the winter months when the virus typically flares.
According to the WHO, there have been 340 cases of bird flu in humans worldwide since 2003 - 208 of them fatal.
Experts believe most human victims of the virus were infected through direct contact with sick birds. Although bird flu is difficult for humans to catch, experts fear it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people and spark a flu pandemic.
The young victim, Nan Kham Than, was among four people suspected of having the virus during an outbreak of the disease in poultry in mid-November, the state-controlled New Light of Myanmar newspaper said. Laboratory tests confirmed that only the girl was infected.
The Health Ministry for 10 days closely monitored 689 persons who were involved in culling chickens or lived near the affected farms, and found that no other people were infected, the newspaper said.
Myanmar reported its first bird flu outbreak in March 2006 in the central part of the country, but until now had reported no human infections.
H5N1 began ravaging Asian poultry stocks in late 2003, leading to the death or slaughter of millions of birds.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/AP/story/345709.html
Kudos to Myanmar for their swift reporting of the case and the equally swift transport of virus samples for analysis. One step toward transparency, no matter how small, is cause for celebration.
It is sometimes worth remembering, however, that dictatorships have an easier time of controlling bird flu than democracies. House-to-house searches are nothing new to an enslaved people.
But it is worth noting that Myanmar did what Indonesia steadfastly refuses to do -- promptly notify the WHO and then equally promptly send virus samples to Geneva.
What a bitter irony it would be if the Indonesians continued their ridiculous withholding of virus samples until they had solid assurances that they would be first among equals for vaccine, and then the virus mutates in, say, Myanmar or Pakistan, and Indonesia has no leverage left because their samples were then worthless? They would have mortgaged their peoples' lives for nothing -- not to mention the rest of the worlds'. And they would be in the same spot they were in previously -- standing in line, waiting for whatever tablescraps were left.
No, I take that back. they would be in a decidedly worse spot, because of the ill will they have generated with the industrialized world.
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