Positive step in bird-flu battle

A few eyebrows were raised when the Social Development and Human Security Ministry said last week it was seeking a budget of Bt9 billion to put a comprehensive strategy in place to ensure Thailand is better prepared for a bird-flu outbreak. The strategy would include preventative measures as well as a contingency plan in case the H5N1 virus mutates and begins to spread easily among humans.

Even though no human bird-flu cases have been detected in the country so far this year, there is no guarantee that people - particularly those living and working in poultry-producing areas - will not catch the potentially fatal flu in the cool season later this year. The ministry should be commended for taking such precautions seriously.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

It cannot be emphasised enough that the Southeast Asian region has the potential to become the epicentre of a new flu epidemic that could kill millions worldwide given the right conditions. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and US public health authorities are now saying they have reason to believe that all prerequisites for such an outbreak are now in place.

Publicly, the WHO is doing its best to strike a delicate balance between not causing a worldwide panic and the need to remind the international community to raise their level of preparedness for if and when the now-sporadic cases of human bird-flu become a pandemic, which would spread suddenly across national boundaries, causing death and chaos in its wake.

International responses have been varied, ranging from dramatic and robust in wealthy industrial countries to fatalistic and measured in most developing countries. The United States, western European countries and Japan have already fast-tracked the development of flu vaccines to make sure their citizens are adequately protected in the event of a flu pandemic.

Healthcare experts have warned that if and when the bird flu starts mutating into a strain that is transmittable from human to human, the time it takes for governments and public-health authorities to react would be the most crucial factor.

Under normal circumstances, it could take up to six months to make and market a vaccine. According to the WHO, the best defence is for governments around the world to come up with a common plan of action backed by a huge pool of financial and health resources. It is obvious that in this regard, rich countries can do a lot more than they have already offered to do or have done to help poorer countries - where outbreaks of human bird-flu strains would likely originate - contain a flu pandemic at its source.

As reasonable as this may sound, most rich countries have instead chosen to concentrate their efforts on defending themselves against the flu pandemic at home, by stockpiling tamiflu, the anti-viral drug used to treat human bird flu, and influenza vaccines.

Thailand, a middle-income developing country, is doing what it can to protect itself by setting up a flu-vaccine production plant at a cost of Bt1.4 billion with additional funding of US$2 million (Bt69.5 million) provided by the WHO. A total output of 2 million doses of flu vaccine per year is expected once the plant reaches its full production capacity. A stockpile of 200,000 doses of tamiflu is also being maintained to treat people afflicted by bird flu.

Many scientists now believe that another influenza pandemic is imminent. What remains unclear is whether it will take the form of a virulent variety resembling the 1918 flu that killed an estimated 50 million people, or a less severe one like the 1958 flu pandemic.

It matters little how good or how meticulously planned a country's defence against the bird flu and a potential bird flu epidemic is to begin with. If and when the killer flu strikes, it will paralyse the country's economic activity, exhaust public-health resources and disrupt key public services such as transport systems in a matter of days or weeks. The key is to contain the epidemic as soon as possible through a crisis management strategy, which must function like clockwork, to be followed by a recovery programme to restore the country economically and socially.