Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 29 (Reuters): The United Nations is considering using “flu-casters”, modelled on television weather forecasters, to publicise vital information if a global flu pandemic strikes.

They could broadcast latest developments from emergency-response facilities at the UN’s World Health Organisation in Geneva, according to David Nabarro, the UN’s top influenza coordinator.

“The flu-casters would draw out the maps and keep people engaged at regular intervals... beaming it from the WHO bunker,” Nabarro said at the World Economic Forum here.

The WHO’s Geneva bunker, a $5-million facility built in a former cinema, is the world’s nerve-centre for tracking bird flu and other deadly diseases.

The room will become a global command centre if the H5N1 bird flu virus, which has killed at least 83 people in Asia since 2003, mutates into a form which spreads easily among humans and sparks a pandemic which could kill millions.

The screen-filled bunker could link the “flu-casters” with TV networks via satellite.

Nabarro was speaking as the United Nations analysed results from a top-level catastrophe simulation to set policies that envisage governments, companies and the media working together to fight a global flu pandemic.

The exercise has produced surprising conclusions that could prove key should the disease start to spread quickly among humans.

One of the most important conclusions was that maintaining infrastructure ? water, power and the provision of food ? could take a higher priority than providing care to the sick, Nabarro said. “It is maybe even more important to concentrate on the essentials of life for those who are living than it is to focus on the treatment of those who are sick.”