THERE is a rising tide of serious disquiet about a pandemic of bird flu spreading from Asia and infecting the world. The First World is already casting around for vaccine stocks. In Britain where a World Health Organization analysis has suggested there could be 50,000 deaths from avian flu the government is reportedly planning to order two million doses of vaccine to be stockpiled for essential workers.

The problem is that the H5N1 vaccine chosen by the British and others is not yet proven to protect against avian flu. In any event many medical experts believe that the biggest danger will come as and when the avian flu transmutes itself a more potent virus by associating itself with an influenza bug that is already adept at infecting humans. Avian flu does seem to be spreading only slowly from its original seat among caged poultry in Hong Kong to elsewhere in Asia, including China, Vietnam Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia.

It had been thought that less than 100 people had so far died, largely from the effect of avian flu on the lungs. Now however it is believed the virus could attack other organs so the actual death toll could be higher though it has almost certainly not reached the 800 people so far killed by SARS since that first emerged in 2002.

The comparison with SARS is however appropriate because of the global panic which that virus produced. For a few anxious months, international airline travel plummeted and the world held its breath expecting a pandemic.

In the event the outbreak appeared to be controlled but not before countries had been bracing themselves for a catastrophe on the scale of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918/19 which may have killed 100 million people, including 17 million Indians and over half a million Americans.

A similar specter, say medical scientists, is still there with avian flu, even though doctors now have an armory of antibiotics while hospital services and emergency isolation procedures, in the wealthy First World at least, are well developed.

One day, even if it is not SARS or avian influenza, a virulent virus will almost certainly sweep the globe again. In the flurry of activity that SARS and now avian flu have already prompted, it is easy to see what will happen whenever that is. The countries that can afford vaccines and major programs of treatment in isolation will mitigate the effects of the disaster, while poor states will have to fend as best as they can and must expect terrible consequences.

While it is of course right that First World governments should be looking initially to protect their own citizens, it would be encouraging if these rich nations were already floating plans to protect and help those countries that cannot afford such measures for themselves. At the moment, to the shame of wealthy countries, no such plans are in evidence.