In 1918, in the space of 24 weeks, between 40 and 100 million people died in a global influenza pandemic that was 'the most deadly disease event in the history of humanity' (WHO). Overwhelmingly these deaths took place in the Global South. In India alone 18.5 million people died.

Today, the lives of tens of millions of people – again, mostly in the global South - are threatened by H5N1 and other strains of avian flu which threaten to jump the species barrier and create a human super-epidemic or 'pandemic'.

Unquestionably, this is one of the largest tests of international solidarity in the last 100 years.

As corporate greed and Western self-interest continue to hinder the urgent actions needed to delay, mitigate and perhaps prevent such a pandemic, we urge everyone – and especially those in the West - to take immediate action to ensure:

1. An immediate end to patents that restrict access to medicines useful in containing avian flu
2. Full funding by rich nations of the surveillance, monitoring and prevention regimes needed in the front-line states most at threat of avian flu
3. A switch to the most modern vaccine production techniques in a crash programme to rapidly build up the largest possible stock of critical vaccines, the latter to be distributed in a global health programme according to need. Noting that H5N1 is only one possible sources of future pandemics, we also urge sustained long-term action for:
4. The creation of a world health system adequate to controlling and / or mitigating the effects of these multiple threats
5. Changes in agriculture to reduce and eliminate the intensive farming of livestock, to retard the development of new pandemic viruses
6. Changes in world development to reduce and eliminate the growth of massive urban slums, which offer the perfect environment for the evolution of virulent flu strains

The debate around bird flu must be shifted away from fear and Western self-centredness and towards global solidarity.