THE World Health Organisation (WHO) last night raised its alert level to five, indicating that a pandemic is imminent.

Director General of the organisation Dr Margaret Chan announced the change at a press conference in Geneva.

She said: “Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously, precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world.”

Dr Chan said that, on the positive side, the world was better-prepared for an influenza pandemic than at any time in history. Preparations taken because of the threat from avian influenza were an investment, and there was now benefit from that investment, she said.

“For the first time in history, we can track the evolution of a pandemic in real time,”

she said.

“I would like to thank countries who are making the results of their investigations publicly available – this helps us understand the disease.”

She said new diseases, by definition, were poorly understood.

“Influenza viruses are notorious for their rapid mutation and unpredictable behaviour.

“WHO and health authorities in affected countries will not have all the answers immediately, but we will get them.”

The alert was raised as it was revealed that a scientist from the North-East is playing a leading role in the race to produce a vaccine.

Dr Peter Laing, who is originally from Gateshead, is chief operating officer with Cambridge-based vaccine development company Lipoxen.

Last night, Dr Laing confirmed that his company, which has developed a way of fast-breeding new vaccines, was working on a swine flu vaccine.

“We are already in the race.

We are working on it now,”

said Dr Laing, who is an expert in immunology and has studied the H1N1 strain of influenza.

Dr Laing said the race had started after the US authorities released full details of the genetic make up of the new strain of swine flu a few days ago. This had allowed vaccine companies to begin to devise a formula.

“The race is also on to produce enough vaccine to be useful, because you would want to immunise the entire population,” he said.

He said it was still not clear how virulent the new strain of flu would turn out to be.

Dr Laing said his company was in talks with manufacturers with a view to mass producing a vaccine. He anticipated it could take about six months to develop and produce an effective vaccine.

Dr Laing, who was an immunology lecturer at Nottingham University before going into the pharmaceuticals industry, said the new swine flu virus appeared “rather similar” to the strains circulating in the 1918 pandemic, which killed up to 40 million people worldwide.

“That doesn’t necessarily mean it is going to be extremely virulent or have the same death rate as the 1918 strain,” he said.

He said there were “grounds for serious concern”

about the situation, but many scientists remained puzzled why the new strain appeared to be a killer in Mexico, but not anywhere else.

■ The first swine flu fatality outside Mexico was confirmed yesterday with the death of a 23-month-old Mexican boy in Houston Texas.