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The US government bird flu “implementation plan” would close schools, ask employees to stay home and cost around 7 million US$. Already hospitals are complaining that costs to be bird flu prepared are too much. The implementation plan lays out 300 specific tasks for each US federal government agency. The plan assumes the worst - that 40 percent of the work force will be absent at the pandemic peak. The plan states that in a worse-case scenario 1.9 million Americans die from the virus and as many as 30 percent become infected.
Details are given about quarantines and border closures although stressing that defence against bird flu is difficult. But the principle goal of the US “implementation plan” is, “the capacity for every American to have a vaccine in the case of a pandemic, no matter what the virus is”, according to the Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt. The plan also stresses more methods to develop vaccines. The government already has ordered $162.5 million worth of vaccine against Asian bird flu.
Specifically, the US implementation plan costs $ 7.1 billion including:
* $1.2 billion for the government to buy enough doses of the vaccine against the current strain of bird flu to protect 20 million Americans; the administration wants to have sufficient vaccine for front-line emergency personnel and at-risk populations, including military personnel.
* $1 billion to stockpile more anti-viral drugs that lessen the severity of the flu symptoms.
* $2.8 billion to speed the development of vaccines as new strains emerge, a process that now takes months. The goal is to have the manufacturing capability by 2010 to brew enough vaccine for every American within six months’ of a pandemic’s start.
* $583 million for states and local governments to prepare emergency plans to respond to an outbreak.
President George W. Bush announced the initial plan in November, 2005. Congress approved about half that amount but is likely to approve the rest soon. “At this moment there is no pandemic influenza in the United States or the world, but if history is our guide there’s reason to be concerned,” Bush said. “In the last century, our country and the world have been hit by three influenza pandemics, and viruses from birds contributed to all of them.”
“The 1918 pandemic was followed by pandemics in 1957 and 1968, which killed tens of thousands of Americans and millions across the world,” continued Bush. “If a pandemic strikes, our country must have a surge capacity in place that will allow us to bring a new vaccine online quickly and manufacture enough to immunize every American against the pandemic strain,” Bush said.
The H5N1 avian bird flu virus has infect 205 people and killed 113 of them in nine countries, according to the World Health Organization.
With a few mutations it could become easily transmitted from person to person and spark a pandemic. And experts say H5N1 looks closer to doing this than any other new flu virus seen in the past 30 years.
Sources :: Health and Human Services (HHS) ; Reuters
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At current technology, a truly targeted vaccine in time to prevent millions of deaths is a fantasy.
I think the government should also be funding stockpiles of Vitamin C, Omega 3, selenium, zinc and curcumin.