AFRANK and critical investigation will be carried out by an independent group to assess the response of the World Health Organisation (WHO) to the H1N1 swine flu virus. A number of governmental officials and scientists have accused the WHO of overplaying the potential danger of the virus. Others claim that the decision to label the spread of the virus a pandemic was influenced by commercial interests. The review will be carried out by a team of 29 scientists working independently. On Monday, they met with WHO Director-General Margaret Chan to begin their investigation. "We want a frank, critical, transparent, credible, and independent review of our performance," Chan told the assembled scientists at the beginning of the threeday meeting in Geneva, which ends on Wednesday. "We want to know what worked well. We want to know what went wrong and, ideally, why. We want to know what can be done better and, ideally, how," she added. Following the swine flu virus being declared a pandemic, governments bought millions of dollars worth of expensive antivirals. Much of the unused stock is now approaching expiry. Swine flu, also known as H1N1, has affected 213 countries in the last year. Some 17,700 people have died, despite millions being infected. WHO's top flu official, Keiji Fukuda, said that it was easy to criticise in hindsight, but at the time there was a possibility that the swine flu could have been even more dangerous than its forerunner virus, bird flu. "We have a great deal of speculation, we have a great deal of criticism," Fukuda told the meeting. "The reality is a huge amount of uncertainty." "In many ways it is more unforgiving out there," he said. "The expectations are higher." He added that bird flu, which killed half of those infected, set the "emotional tone" for the response to the swine flu virus once it began to spread. The problem is also based on WHO's sixfold international alert system for grading new viruses. The most severe alert “pandemic” is based largely on the geographical spread of the virus, rather than its severity. Meanwhile, wild ducks that are immune to the effects of H5N1 avian influenza could be spreading the virus far and wide, US government researchers said on Tuesday. Satellite tracking of migrating northern pintail ducks showed they flew from a bird flu-infected marsh in Japan to nesting areas in Russia, the scientists from the US Geological Survey and the University of Tokyo told Reuters. The study does not prove the pintails carried the virus, but the species can be infected with H5N1 with no ill effects. H5N1 bird flu has been circulating in Asia and the Middle East, with occasional outbreaks in Europe, since 2003. It rarely infects people but when it does it is deadly: the World Health Organisation has documented 493 cases and 292 deaths.
