Pandemic Preparedness
THE ARRIVAL OF avian flu in Africa means that the bird epidemic is officially out of control. None of the methods used against it so far — mass vaccination of poultry flocks in China, mass bird slaughter across Southeast Asia — has prevented wild birds from spreading the H5N1 virus across the globe, to Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Azerbaijan, as well as Siberia and Indonesia. The flu has probably been killing birds in Africa for many months and will probably not be stopped: In poor countries with weak or nonexistent veterinary controls, where chickens are the only source of protein and no compensation for farmers for loss of their livestock is likely, it will be impossible to enforce either mass vaccinations or mass slaughter.Knowing the flight path of migratory birds, many predicted the disease would arrive in Africa. But predicting a disaster and being prepared for a disaster — as this country learned during Hurricane Katrina — are not the same thing. Despite high-level attention paid to this issue, by President Bush as well as the United Nations, neither Africa nor the international community is even remotely prepared for an epidemic of avian flu or for a human disease that could develop if the virus mutates.
It is of course impossible to say when, or even if, Bird Flu will mutate to human to human transmission. It is inevitable though that an disease of this type will arise at some point, and it is obvious that we are not prepared for such a thing.
While it is impossible to prepared fully for every possible threat, it seems to me that given the possible costs and the liklihood of a pandemic occuring in the reletively near future we should be doing more.
