The World Health Organisation said today 2 to 7.4 million deaths was a reasonable working forecast for a global influenza pandemic. The organisation was distancing itself from a top UN official's figure of up to 150 million.
Dr David Nabarro, named yesterday as the UN coordinator for global readiness against an outbreak, had said that the world response would determine whether a flu virus ends up killing 5 million or as many as 150 million.
The top figure would be some three times the toll from the most lethal flu pandemic so far recorded - the 1918-19 'Spanish flu' outbreak in which up to 50 million may have died.
'There is obvious confusion, and I think that has to be straightened out. I don't think you will hear Dr Nabarro say the same sort of thing again,' WHO influenza spokesman Dick Thompson told a news briefing.
The WHO conceded that all forecasts were guesswork and said Nabarro's comments had merely reflected widely diverging expert opinion.
The UN health agency is however very worried about the latest strain of avian flu which has hit a number of Asian countries and which it fears has the potential to trigger a new pandemic.
It says the current H5N1 strain of bird flu cannot be easily transmitted among humans, but it is monitoring the virus to see whether there are any genetic changes which could make it become more lethal and spread more rapidly.
