GENEVA - The world is not ready to deal with a lengthy public health emergency, a panel of international experts said Wednesday, basing its conclusions on the swine flu outbreak.
The panel's report on the World Health Organization's handling of the 2009 outbreak of the H1N1 flu concludes that the world is "ill-prepared to respond to a severe influenza pandemic or to any similarly global, sustained and threatening public health emergency."
It found that international health regulations adopted in 2005 by 194 nations are helping improve preparations, but are not being put into practice fast enough globally.
It also said the WHO did some things well during the pandemic and fell short in other areas, but there was "no evidence of malfeasance.
Dr. Harvey Fineberg, who chaired the review panel of 25 experts commissioned by WHO, said what happened during the outbreak was dictated mainly by the virus itself, not the world's response to it.
"Vaccines were produced as quickly as technology permitted, but they came only months after the outbreak," he told reporters at the United Nation's European headquarters in Geneva, where the World Health Assembly was meeting.
"And the world's ability to cope with this kind of severe threat to health is in many ways not up to the task," he added.
Fineberg, the president of the Institute of Medicine in Washington, warned that it will not be easy for nations to find ways to improve their response to an outbreak such as H1N1.
