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GENEVA, Switzerland -- The U.N. health agency has distanced itself from a top official's prediction that a global influenza pandemic could kill as many as 150 million people.

On Thursday, Dr. David Nabarro said a pandemic could come at any time and claim anywhere between 5 million and 150 million lives depending on the world's response to bird flu.

However on Friday, a spokesman for the U.N.'s World Health Organization said it was impossible to estimate how many people could die from a possible new pandemic triggered by bird flu.

"There is obvious confusion, and I think that has to be straightened out. I don't think you will hear Dr. Nabarro say the same sort of thing again," Reuters quoted WHO influenza spokesman Dick Thompson as telling reporters.

Nabarro was named Thursday as the U.N. coordinator for avian and human influenza.

Thompson referred to WHO's long-standing forecast of 2 million to 7.4 million deaths, which comes from a study by the U.S.-based Centers for Disease Control (CDC), according to Reuters.

"We think that this is the most reasoned position," Thompson said, because the last two flu pandemics have been relatively mild.

Navarro's top figure of 150 million deaths would be more than three times the toll from the most lethal flu pandemic so far recorded -- the 1918-19 outbreak in which more than 40 million died.

Estimates from scientists of the death toll from a possible new pandemic have ranged from less than 2 million to more than 100 million, The Associated Press reported.

The number of deaths will depend largely on how contagious and lethal the virus is -- two factors that cannot be known until the pandemic strain emerges, AP said.

However, even though several estimates could be plausible, WHO "can't be dragged into further scaremongering," Thompson told reporters Friday.

"One of those numbers will turn out to be right," AP quoted him as saying. "We're not going to know how lethal the next pandemic is going to be until the pandemic begins."

At his Thursday news conference at the United Nations in New York, Nabarro said the bird flu virus was likely to mutate into a strain that could be passed person to person.

"We expect the next influenza pandemic to come at any time now, and it's likely to be caused by a mutant of the virus that is currently causing bird flu in Asia," AP quoted Nabarro as saying.

"I believe the work we're doing over the next few months on prevention and preparedness will make the difference between, for example, whether the next pandemic leads us in the direction of 150 (million) or in the direction of 5 (million)," he said.

"So our effectiveness will be directly measured in lives saved and the consequences for the world."

Nabarro's comments came as governments and international organizations intensified efforts to combat the H5N1 strain of bird flu.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday agreed to spend $4 billion to stock up on anti-viral drugs and increase global surveillance for the disease.

But the money, attached to an unrelated fiscal 2006 spending bill for the military, has not been embraced by the House of Representatives.

Earlier this month U.S. President George W. Bush announced a plan at the United Nations calling for global resources and expertise to be pooled to fight bird flu.

The United States will host a planning meeting on the subject next week. Canada will host an October 25-26 meeting of high-level public health officials in Ottawa. And WHO has called for a November 7-8 meeting in Geneva to coordinate needed funding.

The H5N1 virus has so far mainly infected humans who were in close contact with infected birds. It has killed more than 60 people in four Asian nations since late 2003.

Millions of birds in Asia have been destroyed. An estimated $10 billion to $15 billion in losses to the poultry industry have been recorded so far, with the heaviest losses in Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia, Reuters reported.

On Thursday, Nabarro said Asia and the Middle East were of special concern as bird flu is concentrated in Asia and could be carried to the Middle East by migratory flocks.

But he warned that an outbreak in impoverished and conflict-ridden parts of Africa, where health services are scarce and millions have been driven from their homes, could lead to "a nightmare scenario."

Nabarro said he would head a new U.N. office in New York that would begin mobilizing governments, international agencies, health workers and the pharmaceutical industry.

Once the virus began spreading among humans, it would be only a matter of weeks before a pandemic was under way, so a rapid response would be crucial, he said.

"The avian flu epidemic has to be controlled if we are to prevent a human influenza pandemic," AP quoted Nabarro as saying.

The last flu pandemic broke out in 1918 following World War I, killing more than 40 million people. There were subsequent pandemics in 1957 and 1968 which had lower death rates but caused great disruption, he said.

Nabarro said he faces the challenges of persuading governments to prepare for a pandemic and to overcome their reluctance to publicly disclose an outbreak.

Another major challenge will be to gear up vaccine makers to produce large quantities immediately after a pandemic starts and the exact variety of influenza is known, he said.

Nabarro plans to travel to Washington on Friday to work with the U.S. State Department on preparations for the first meeting of the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza, to be held on October 7, AP said.

The U.S. initiative is designed to increase global readiness to deal with a human flu pandemic and will "garner political will," AP quoted him as saying.

Nabarro said he will then spend the next two weeks traveling in Asia before attending a meeting of health ministers in Ottawa on October 25.

Nabarro said he hopes to persuade governments that "the U.N. system is actually going to help keep their people alive" and to generate political support for a three-pronged strategy focusing on prevention, preparedness and response to a potential pandemic.

While the U.N.'s efforts will initially focus on Asian countries, Nabarro said that because of the flight patterns of migratory birds "and our perception that the virus is in the migratory birds, we need to be looking at this globally," AP reported.

He said "the real nightmare scenario is that the pandemic takes root in some of the least well-served and perhaps very crowded parts of the world where services are bad," like the camps for thousands of people who have fled their homes in Sudan's conflict-wracked Darfur region, AP reported.

U.N. backs off 150m flu deaths

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