Although a pandemic strain of flu is more likely to emerge elsewhere in the world, Britain is the country to which it is most likely to spread once the disease evolves the ability readily to infect humans, the research suggests.

High population density, widespread urbanisation and large number of tourists and business visitors make it particularly vulnerable to a new virus, the study by Maplecroft, a risk consultancy, finds.

As well as topping the league table of countries to which human H5N1 flu is likely to spread, Britain is also the only Western country considered at “extreme risk” from the general impact of a pandemic.

The alarming figures are from a global survey that uses World Health Organisation (WHO) data to calculate the hazards that a pandemic of flu or another new infectious disease would pose to individual countries and regions.

Maplecroft assessed the likelihood of a new human disease emerging in each of 161 countries; the chances of each country being affected by a new disease that arises elsewhere; and national capacity to cope with such an outbreak. These three factors were been combined to create a general pandemic risk index, which estimates the overall hazard that an emerging disease would pose to each nation.

Although the Government’s contingency plans and a good public health system mean that Britain was judged among those that would best be able to contain an avian flu outbreak, it heads the league table of those to which the disease is most likely to spread. It is also the ninth most likely country in which a pandemic might emerge.

Overall, Britain is the 25th most vulnerable nation to the overall effects of a pandemic, largely because of its peculiar susceptibility to the arrival of a new disease.

“We were surprised and concerned that the UK came out first for spread, but it is understandable,” said Alyson Warhurst, Professor of Strategy and International Development at Warwick Business School and a director of Maplecroft.

“The openness of our economy, the high population density, the high urban density and the heavy traffic of tourists and immigrants all combine to add to the risk. This all means we have to be very stringent in putting together contingency plans.”

All the countries that have reported human cases of bird flu — Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, China and Turkey — are classed as being at high or extreme risk.

Andy Thow, principal researcher for Maplecroft’s global map of pandemic risk, said that it had been compiled with data from the WHO, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation and the World Resources Institute. “We then replicated the methodology that the WHO uses to work out detailed risk on a regional basis, as in China at the moment, and applied this on a national basis,” Dr Thow said.

“We used 32 indicators in total, each of which measures a different aspect of risk for a pandemic, or which is a proxy for the conditions that influence disease.”

The likelihood of a new pandemic disease strain emerging in any country considered variables such as its population density, the proportion of agricultural workers in the labour force, live animal imports and exports and the density of poultry, pigs and other livestock.

The risk of a new disease spreading to a country also took into account its population density, as well as factors such as the urban population, tourist numbers, local environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity, and the prevalence of existing pandemic diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV.

www.timesonline.co.uk/birdflu

View interactive pandemic risk map

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