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White House Outlines Bird Flu Preparations

By Mark Huffman
ConsumerAffairs.com

November 1, 2005

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President Bush has outlined a national strategy for dealing with a possible pandemic of bird flu. The strategy outlines plans to detect outbreaks, expand domestic vaccine production capacity and stockpile treatments.

Bush has requested $7.1 billion in emergency funding to implement the plan.

The White House said it is concerned about the influenza virus known as H5N1 or avian flu. Now spreading through bird populations across Asia and recently reaching into Europe, the new influenza strain has infected domesticated birds like ducks and chickens as well as long-range migratory birds.

In 1997, the first recorded outbreak among people took place in Hong Kong. Avian flu struck again in late 2003 and has infected over 120 people in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia and killed more than 60, a 50 percent mortality rate.

At the moment, avian flu remains primarily an animal disease and unless people come into direct, sustained contact with infected birds, it is unlikely they will contract the disease.

However, if the virus mutates it could quickly acquire the capability to be passed from human to human, possibly setting off a global pandemic.

To help with detection, the plan calls for partnerships with international health agencies and increased bio-surveillance domestically. That, the White House says, will help rapidly detect, quantify, and respond to outbreaks of disease and deliver information quickly to local, state, national, and international public health officials. Improved surveillance will help stop, slow, or limit the spread of a pandemic and save lives, it said.

Stockpiling a vaccine against bird flu is not so easy.

Scientists need a sample of the new strain before they can produce a vaccine against it. This means it is difficult to produce a vaccine before the pandemic actually appears. For a pandemic's first several months, there may not be a vaccine. So the government will stockpile antiviral drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza. They won’t prevent people from contracting the flu, but they can reduce the severity of the illness when taken within 48 hours of getting sick.

The administration said it will work with public health officials and the medical community to develop effective pandemic emergency plans in all 50 states.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt has been ordered to bring together state and local public health officials to discuss plans for a pandemic. The President is asking Congress for $583 million for pandemic preparedness including $100 million to help states complete and exercise their pandemic plans before a pandemic strikes.

While most Americans are familiar with influenza or the "flu" -- a respiratory illness that makes hundreds of thousands of people sick every year -- the White House notes pandemic flu is another matter.

It occurs when a new strain of influenza emerges that can be transmitted easily from person to person and for which people have no immunity. Unlike seasonal flu, it can kill the young and healthy as well as the frail and sick.

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