On June 11, 2009, Margaret Chan, director general of the WorldHealth Organization (WHO), declared that the status of the influenzaA (H1N1) pandemic had reached phase 6 — active transmissionon a global scale. Until now, the case fatality rate of thisinfluenza has been quite low, but history teaches us that thesituation could take a turn for the worse during the next waveof the pandemic. If a 1918-like pandemic were to occur today,tens of millions of people could die, the vast majority of themin the world's poorest countries.
