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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Wise to prepare for flu pandemic

The Spokesman-Review

Not since Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” have people been so wary of winged creatures. The avian flu has infected 122 people and killed 62 in Southeast Asia. Health experts fear that it will mutate into a form that is easily transmitted among humans and become a global pandemic. If that were to happen, people would be powerless to stop it, because there is no vaccine.

That’s where the U.S. plan to modernize and stockpile vaccinations comes in. On Tuesday, President Bush announced a $7.1 billion plan that faces up to the possibility of a flu pandemic. Health officials say that threat doesn’t have to come from the avian flu to justify a massive mobilization.

“Pandemics happen,” Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt told Congress on Wednesday. “They happened before, and they’ll happen again. If it isn’t the HSN1 (avian flu), it’ll be another virus.”

The 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic killed about 50 million people worldwide. More U.S. soldiers died from that than combat in World War I. The 1957 Asian flu outbreak killed an estimated 1 million to 4 million people worldwide. And the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968 killed an estimated 750,000 to 2 million people and 34,000 people in the United States.

While the United States shouldn’t panic, it is wise to prepare for the massive response needed for a pandemic. Hospitals and clinics would be overwhelmed. Travel would be restricted. Quarantines would have to be established.

But the paramount need for whatever flu strikes is vaccination. Even without pandemics, the United States regularly experiences vaccination shortages. Liability concerns make production a risky venture. And because vaccines are one-shot medications, it’s difficult to make a profit.

The White House plan addresses both of those hurdles by introducing protections against lawsuits and providing seed money for research and development of vaccinations. Recent breakthroughs in cell culture technology could mean vaccines could be produced more quickly than the 50-year-old method of deriving vaccines from chicken eggs.

The plan calls for stockpiling 81 million courses (full treatments) and mandates the purchase of 31 million courses from the states. It also calls on state and local governments to pitch in to pay for disaster preparedness. Many public health officials, who have undergone cutbacks in recent years, say that is unrealistic. States just don’t have the money, and the feds’ subsidy won’t be enough. If the Homeland Security mandates are an indicator, they have a point.

Nonetheless, the federal plan is a good start. Preparing now is good insurance against the devastation that could be wrought by another flu pandemic.