Why I believe a killer flu pandemic is just beyond the corner

The big one is coming: a global virus pandemic that could kill 33 million victims in its first 200 days.

Within the ensuing two years, more than 300 million people could perish worldwide.

At the extreme, with disrupted supply of food and medicines and without enough survivors to run computer or energy systems, the global economy would collapse. Starvation and looting could lay waste to parts of the world.

It’s a disaster movie nightmare. Yet it is waiting to come true, thanks to influenza — the most diabolical, hardest-to-control and fastest-spreading potential viral killer known to humankind.

As a medical doctor and a health chief who has led global programmes at the World Health Organisation (WHO), I believe that the world is at risk of a viral pandemic that will be at least as deadly as anything we have ever known before.

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