# 3182
Everyone likes to say it’s a small world, but perhaps it’s not small enough that a one-size-fits-all pandemic severity level will work across all regions.
At least, that’s the thinking of the World Health Organization (WHO) which has been debating on how to come up with a global pandemic severity index.
For the WHO, and other public health agencies, a pandemic describes the geographic spread of a disease – not the severity. For the public and the media, however, the word `pandemic’ suggests a severe event.
Governments would prefer some better way to quantify the impact of a pandemic, and have asked the WHO to try to come up with some kind of global severity index.
That, it turns out, isn’t so easy to do.
CIDRAP’s Lisa Schnirring picks up the story.
WHO foresees problems with pandemic severity index
Lisa Schnirring
Staff Writer
May 13, 2009 (CIDRAP News) – A World Health Organization (WHO) official today signaled that the agency is stepping back from plans to develop a way to grade pandemic severity, because its experts believe severity will vary from place to place, making the development of a severity index difficult and its use impractical.
Sylvie Briand, acting director of the WHO's Global Influenza Programme, told reporters at a media briefing today that the agency's technical experts have discussed a severity index several times, and they understand that pandemic severity is a key piece of information that governments use in response planning. But even within the same country, severity can vary among regions and during different waves of illness.
"Having one indicator to describe all these varieties of situations was not very helpful," Briand said.
She said severity is based on three components: the virulence and transmissibility of the virus, the vulnerability of the population, and the capacity of a country to fight the disease. All three components can vary across countries and pandemic waves, Briand said. "This is why it's hard to have an index."
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