Letters and Blogs

H1N1 a threat even after 90 years

Recent studies suggest the current strain of A(H1N1) virus has been evolving for almost a century, that is, since the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic known as Spanish Flu.

Poor surveillance of pigs and unclear mechanisms to study human transmission are the critical reasons why pandemic disease management is so poor.

Now, WHO has issued a Phase-6 level alert confirming "widespread human infection". Clearly, public safety and security have been compromised.

Even though governments and global health institutions had issued comprehensive guidelines on preparedness long before the HINI pandemic broke out, authorities across the world failed to find tactical ways to make frontline screening of people and animals safer.

Waiting for test results of samples sent to a centralized laboratory has been causing unnecessary risk and delay, and often resulting in indiscriminate quarantine of people and widespread culling of birds and animals.

Current technologies aimed at point-of-care applications involve high costs and lack of standardization, and do not address the real needs of a decentralized infrastructure and the rigorous demands of a remote clinical set-up operating in harsh environmental conditions.

Clearly, the need is for low cost durable and easy-to-use diagnostic tools that would contribute to a routine maintenance system run by local farmers, doctors and veterinarians.

China's biotech community has got such tools and is prepared to use them within the existing infrastructure to complement the services of centralized clinical testing laboratories.

For example, our laboratories at Hai Kang Life Corporation in Hong Kong and Beijing have developed molecular diagnostic tools for all critical infectious diseases such as AIV and SARS and now H1N1, using WHO's ASSURED guidelines (Affordable, Sensitive, Specific, User-friendly, Rapid and robust, Equipment free and Deliverable to the low resource setting).

Now is the time to hand over those mobile test-kits to practitioners faced with the dangerous challenge of frontline screening of humans.

It is imperative to address the root cause of the problem - the demand for early detection - to remove the risk of transmission by charting a real-time radar image of the disease and defining its pathogen type, location, public immunity and risk of transmission. Clearly, we have the right tools but are not using them.

Albert Cheung Hoi YU, Ph.D.

via Email

Hackers are hobos on enemy train

Comment on the article, "China at the mercy of global hackers" (China Daily website, June 16)

The Internet operates on certain rules that everyone across the globe follows. People are able to communicate across borders because of these rules. The Internet is similar to railway tracks, which are based on agreed gauges such as meter or broad gauge.

The principal function of cyber space technology is to facilitate communication within our own borders. Given the size and population of our country, our internal communication traffic far exceeds that with the outside world.

Taking a page from the railway analogy, we could develop our own national communication protocol, which would be different from the one followed on the Net at present.

It would be like adopting a new railway gauge to make it impossible for unwanted train carriages to run on our tracks. Once such a communication system is implemented we will be able to protect ourselves from our adversaries, including hackers and those behind them.

Analogy

on China Daily website

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(China Daily 06/19/2009 page9)