REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Marie Heuzé, the Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing which was also attended by Spokespersons for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the International Organization for Migration, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the UN Refugee Agency, the United Nations Development Programme, the International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Meteorological Organization.

At the end of the briefing, Gregory Hartl of the World Health Organization answered questions by journalists concerning the situation of swine flu.

Sri Lanka

Ms. Heuzé said the United Nations had sent Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes to Sri Lanka on a three-day special mission. Mr. Holmes was not able to get from the Government of Sri Lanka authorization for the United Nations to have access to the conflict zone where civilians were being held.

Elizabeth Byrs of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Mr. Holmes had stressed with Government officials a need for a humanitarian pause to conduct an assessment of the conflict zone and to bring in emergency supplies including food and medical supplies. He also asked for access to the screening points and the need for the release of some 14 UN staff and approximately 207 members of non-governmental organizations who had not been able to leave the camps or the conflict zone. From 27 October 2008 to 27 April 2009, 151,231 internally displaced persons had fled from the conflict zone. There was now congestion in the camps which was causing sanitary problems. There were 18 persons in each tent, which usually housed only five persons. There were also health problems. There was only one nurse for each 40 patients and a shortage of surgeons. Also, three months ago, there had been 7,723 cases of chickenpox. France had sent a civil protection team to Vavuniya to set up a hospital with 30 medical staff, two surgeons and two anaesthesiologists. According to available figures, there was an increase of some 40,000 internally displaced persons over the past few days, bringing the total to over 150,000 internally displaced persons in the camps in Vavuniya, Jaffna, Mannar and Trincomalee. It was estimated that 50,000 people were still trapped in the conflict zone. There were more details in the briefing note.

Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration said with a flood of over 110,000 internally displaced people in the past ten days into Vavuniya, the government-controlled district adjoining the LTTE conflict zone, IOM was racing to provide shelter and sanitation for nearly 40,000 new arrivals. The IOM Vavuniya team, which now numbered over 130, including 30 staff and 100 locally recruited labourers, had already built 2,500 emergency shelters but was now turning to tents as the fastest way to shelter the internally displaced persons from the extreme heat. IOM Sri Lanka had 400 tents in stock and was flying in a further 4,000 to Colombo from Dubai and China on 29 April. There were more details in the briefing notes.

Veronique Taveau of the United Nations Children’s Fund said journalists had probably already seen the press release about UNICEF distributing 50 tons of materials to Sri Lanka. UNICEF was also concerned about access. There would probably be a new humanitarian update later today or tomorrow.

William Spindler of the UN Refugee Agency said tens of thousands of civilians continued to make their way out of the conflict zone in Sri Lanka. UNHCR was responding to the deepening emergency unfolding in Sri Lanka’s north. So far, UNHCR had confirmed that some 160,000 people had been displaced by fighting into the government controlled areas, of which, more than 140,000 were being accommodated in 32 sites in Vavuniya, another 11,000 in Jaffna and some 5,000 in Trincomalee. Yesterday, UNHCR began an aid airlift for displaced people in Sri Lanka with the first plane carrying almost 3,000 family-size tents from its stockpiles in Dubai. A second humanitarian flight, a Boeing 777 carrying 103 metric tons of aid, arrived early today in Colombo. So far, UNHCR had airlifted some 5,000 family tents and a large consignment of relief items. All these relief items would be transported for immediate distribution in the north, where UNHCR had already distributed tens of
thousands of relief items. UNHCR was also fielding more staff to carry out protection monitoring at the sites hosting displaced people. UNHCR staff on the ground reported that the present situation in the north was critical. UNHCR reminded the
Government of its responsibilities towards the civilian population and the need to ensure the protection of its own citizens. UNHCR urged that all necessary steps be taken to investigate these incidents and to bring those responsible to justice. UNHCR was revising its current appeal for Sri Lanka, and increasing its budget for Sri Lankan internally displaced people to $16.6 million.

Children in Gaza

Ms. Taveau of UNICEF said a media release was available at the back of the room on the situation of children in Gaza. More than three months or 100 days after the cessation of hostilities in Gaza, UNICEF was still concerned about the situation in Gaza. Although the conflict had ended, children in Gaza continued to suffer both physically and psychologically, according to Patricia McPhillips, UNICEF’s Special Representative to the occupied Palestinian territory. For many households, food, fuel and cash were in short supply. The blockade of Gaza continued. In March, an average of 132 trucks entered Gaza every day, compared to 475 in May 2007. Destroyed and damaged homes, schools and health facilities could not be reconstructed or repaired due to Israeli restrictions against cement imports. Damaged water and sanitation systems also still lacked repair materials. Also UNICEF educational supplies had not been allowed in. Five children had died in unexploded ordnance-related incidents since the end of the conflict, and Ms. Taveau said UNICEF was holding a campaign to warn about the risks of unexploded ordnance.

United Nations Development Programme

Adam Rogers of the United Nations Development Programme said Helen Clark was officially sworn in yesterday by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as UNDP’s new Administrator. Today, there was the official handing over and swearing in ceremony by the Maori delegation in New York. The King of the Maori people would be doing an official Maori ceremony, which would be broadcast live.

Mr. Rogers said UNDP had released the human development report for Russia two days ago. The report highlighted some demographic challenges which the country was facing, short life expectancy, low birth rates, a shrinking and aging population and a lack of a clear immigration policy. In the last 16 years, Russia had lost more than 12 million people, which was partially compensated by migration, 5.7 million people. A press release was available with more details.

In the South Pacific, Mr. Rogers said Archbishop Desmond Tutu was opening a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to try to bring peace to the Solomon Islands after five years of civil unrest.

ICRC and Pakistan

Anna Nelson of the International Committee of the Red Cross said the ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger would be travelling to Pakistan today, to open ICRC’s new surgical hospital for weapon wounded patients in Peshawar. The hospital had been set up to handle an increasing number of people who were injured as a result of the conflict in the north of Pakistan. In past months, the armed conflict in the north of Pakistan had forced many people to flee their homes. A press release would be issued tomorrow, when the ICRC President arrived in Pakistan.

West Africa and Climate Change

Gaelle Sevenier of the World Meteorological Organization said West Africa was home to 43 per cent of the total population in sub-Saharan Africa, and it was one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change. The annual rainfall in West Africa had decreased from 20 to 40 per cent from the period 1931-1960 to 1968-1990. Future projects indicated that Africa was very likely to warm during this century, decreasing the length of the growing season in many parts of West Africa. In some countries, yields from rain-fed agriculture could be reduced by up to 50 per cent by 2020. That was why WMO, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the State Agency for Meteorology of Spain and partners were this week bringing together 70 experts and key decision-makers in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, to discuss and recommend collaborative mitigation and adaptation options for the agriculture, livestock, forestry and fisheries sectors in West Africa. A press release was available with more details.

Ms. Sevenier pointed out that climate adaptation and risk management, particularly for the agricultural sector, would be a major topic of discussion at the World Climate Conference 3, which would be held in Geneva from 31 August to 4 September.

Swine Flu

Gregory Hartl, spokesman from the World Health Organization said the latest confirmed cases of swine influenza are the following: 40 confirmed cases from the United States, 26 cases from Mexico, six cases from Canada and one case from Spain. Those are the laboratory-confirmed cases as reported to WHO.

Hartl said that yesterday, the WHO announced that the Emergency Committee called to by the Director -General of WHO recommended to raise the level of pandemic from 3 to 4. . Their statement was posted on the web followed by a phone global news conference late in the day around 10:30pm.

WHO did not recommend any travel restrictions or borders closure. This was because from a public health perspective, it is not possible to screen all travels at airports . If people who have cough and fever are screened at airports , this might be caused by so many other viruses. However, if a person had been exposed or even infected with this new swine influenza virus, that person might not be symptomatic at an airport or any other border crossing. Therefore border controls and travel restrictions did not work. On the other hand, it was very prudent for governments to say to their nationals that they might want to think twice about going to an infected area. This was a case of duty of care versus public health criteria. WHO believes there should be no travel restrictions or border closures recommended. If a person felt ill, that person should not travel in any case to any place. If a person was travelling to an infected area or to a non-infected area, and returned sick, it is recommended to see a doctor.

For the moment, this influenza virus had shown no resistance to either of two antivirals Oseltamivir and zanamivir.
Mr. Hartl said in terms of community level infection, they knew that there was community level infection in Mexico, this had become quite clear. WHO had three separate teams on the ground, upwards of 15 if not 20 people working in conjunction with the Mexican authorities. WHO had seen that there had been three smaller waves probably of human-to-human transmission and now there was amplification among suspected cases. The majority of these cases were still all suspected, because there were only 26 confirmed cases. There was also suspected human -to- human transmission in other locations. They had not seen any contacts with pigs or any other sources of transmission, so they had to come to the conclusion that they were seeing human-to-human transmission. In many of the instances, they were imported cases, rather than community transmissions.

The Emergency Committee is not meeting today. It had already met twice, and if they met again, it would probably be a virtual meeting again.

Mr. Hartl said the virus H1N1 has a pandemic potential, and they were now seeing some of this potential given the community level transmission. Phase four was a kind of a turning point. From here, they could go forward to phase five, which would mean a pandemic, but equally, if they saw that large-scale community transmissions were not sustained, they could stay at phase four or even go back to phase three. Countries should focus or step up efforts to mitigate possible effects on their people. They should look at actions to protect the safety of their people. They should provide information and let people know what the risks are and how to prevent them. People should be kept informed in order for them to be able to make their own decisions, and people should know what they should do if they felt that they had been infected. Governments would need to start thinking about organizing larger scale care for this specific disease in their health facilities.

There are currently four reference laboratories working with seed virus, and they are at various stages of producing the seed virus needed to make the vaccine. It took a while to grow the virus. The signal would not be given to pharmaceutical companies to produce a pandemic vaccine before they went into phase five. It was a very big decision because it would mean suspending normal, seasonal influenza vaccine production. If they went into pandemic vaccine production, it would effectively mean that no one in the upcoming flu season was going to get their normal seasonal flu shots.

There are rumors about new cases in many countries, including China asked a journalist. Mr. Hartl said it is important for WHO to hear what is going on. Some of the rumors might turn out to be unfounded, but it was important to hear about them. There was no danger from eating pork. All transmissions so far had been human- to- human transmissions. As any meat if cooked well, it would kill any virus, and not just H1N1 virus.
was immediately followed by H5N1, the avian influenza. With those two events in 2003 and 2004, there was a huge amount of work done around preparedness and how best to stop, prevent and mitigate a pandemic. One of things that was found in numerous studies and in simulations was that border controls and screening did not work. Most countries had pandemic plans in 2004-2005, more than 150 countries had pandemic preparedness plans.

In response to a question on why people had died in Mexico and not in other countries, and whether this had to do with immediate availability of medicines, Mr. Hartl said this is an extremely difficult question to answer and many scientists are looking into this now. There are seven confirmed deaths in Mexico now and other cases of very severe illness. In all the other instances, the illness had only been mild. They did not understand yet why the disease was more severe in Mexico. Mexico had large stocks of Tamiflu. Early in a new disease event, when a disease has never been seen before, doctors did not know what they were dealing with. It is extremely unfortunate and very sad for those infected at the beginning of an outbreak that it was always the ones at the beginning of an outbreak who were most vulnerable, both patients and medical staff.

WHO had seen that the virus, in at least two countries, was spreading indigenously; it was wide spread within Mexico and had shown itself in various locations in the United States. It was in Canada, and there was a confirmed case in Spain. If the virus was efficient, if it spread easily from human to human, it would probably continue to spread. The world would then have to take mitigation measures to try to reduce the speed. If they went to phase five and phase six, they would start to produce vaccine to prevent further infection. On the other hand, they were still at phase four because they did not have incontrovertible evidence that this was an efficient spreader. It might turn out not to be. So again, phase four was a kind of turning point phase.

Mr. Hartl said after SARS, it had been quite clear that the efficacy of border closures and border checks far under weighed the economic disruption. There was much more economic disruption caused than there was public health benefit. Therefore, they did not want to repeat something that did not work.