Flu pandemic: EU getting ready for global response

Only a coordinated global response will be capable of fighting a pandemic, since viruses know no borders. If the H5N1 virus – originally from birds – comes to mutate and transmit from human to human, it will result in a world-wide pandemic with heavy consequences. Europe drew lessons from SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which appeared in China and spread very rapidly to other regions of the world, affecting more than 8000 people of whom more than 800 died) and has created the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) in Stockholm.