100 years after ‘Spanish flu’, new global pandemics feared

DAVOS, Switzerland: Ebola, zika, SARS: a century after the “Spanish flu” killed 50 million people, humanity now risks a new wave of deadly diseases, and in today’s globalised world another such pandemic may be unavoidable, experts warned at the Davos summit this week. “Pandemics are becoming a real threat to humanity,” Elhadj As Sy, secretary general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told AFP at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort. One Davos discussion titled “Are We Ready For the Next Pandemic?” was joined by experts including Sylvie Briand, a specialist in infectious diseases at the World Health Organisation (WHO). “We know that it is coming, but we have no way of stopping it,” she said. This year marks the centenary of the worst epidemic in history: the so-called Spanish flu.