The lack of isolation units and the low level of specialist consultants in Irish hospitals would damage Ireland's ability to cope with an outbreak of avian flu in the human population, a medical expert said yesterday.
Dr Jack Lambert, a consultant in infectious diseases at the Mater hospital, told a seminar on bird flu organised by pharmaceutical company Roche that he believed isolation units would be necessary if the disease arrived here. "Despite the fact that money has been set aside to build isolation units at the Mater and Tallaght hospitals, no building has started yet," he said.
Dr Lambert said there was also a critical shortage of infectious diseases consultants in the country and only seven were available if a flu pandemic broke out. He told the press briefing that while the Government had been stockpiling drugs, he did not know if public health doctors or consultants would be on 24-hour call should a pandemic break out.
He said if bird flu infected the human population, the disease would spread in overcrowded A&E departments. "The initial cases need high-intensity isolation units to break the infection chain and that is a weak point in our defences," he said.
Prof John Oxford, a leading expert on flu, said a pandemic had the ability not only to cause many deaths but to ruin economies as well."We can stop a pandemic with a deluge of drugs but we have to know where to strike the disease to deal with it like we did with SARS," he said.