Released July 20, 2007

AUBURN UNIVERSITY, Ala. -- While the Bush administration has ramped up its efforts to combat a pandemic outbreak of avian flu, administration officials concede that much remains to be done.

They say the nation still lacks not only the capacity for dealing with the crisis but also a better means for tracking the disease’s spread throughout the country.

One hotly debated issue within the past year has hinged on the question of whether the nation’s borders should be sealed following such an outbreak — something the government has opted not to do, partly because the disease’s eventual entry into the country likely is inevitable no matter what is done.

“The reality is that there are tremendous challenges to sealing our border to begin with,” said Dr. Rajeev Venkayya, special assistant to the president for biodefense, who recently was quoted in the New York Times. “Secondly, we believe that if a pandemic virus emerges anywhere in the globe, it is inevitable that it will arrive here in the United States irrespective of the action we take at the borders.”

Economic considerations also have to be factored in, says Dr. Robert Norton, an Auburn University veterinary bacteriologist who specializes in bioterrorism and works closely with Alabama Cooperative Extension System educating Alabamians about this virus and other similar threats.

Because Americans now operate in a highly internationalized economy, Norton says it’s “absolutely imperative” that we avoid interrupting the flow of goods and services.

In a White House briefing last Tuesday, Bush administration officials stressed the progress that already has been made in contingency planning for such an outbreak, including a planned $1-billion investment in efforts to discover more effective ways to manufacture flu vaccines. The government also announced it would release $897 million to states aimed at enhancing emergency preparedness. This includes $175 million for pandemic flu preparedness.

While acknowledging that extra money always is a good thing, Norton says money alone is not the solution. Much of the success of a pandemic preparedness effort will depend on how this money is spent.

The biggest measure of success, Norton says, will be a coherent plan that actually can be carried out effectively following an outbreak.

For now, one critical need is enhanced biosurveillance capability, he says.

“Biosurveillance is crucial, but we don’t have it to the degree that we need it here in the United States,” Norton says, adding that part of this lapse is because public interest in the avian flu threat has waned within the past year.

“Largely because we haven’t had a serious outbreak, public attention has begun dropping off.”

For his part, Venkayya has conceded serious shortfalls in the nation’s biosurveillance capability.

“Just to be brutally honest, we have a lot of trouble determining when we have an outbreak of disease in a community here in the U.S.,” Venkayya said. “We need to have uniform biosurveillance capability to prepare not only for a pandemic but any outbreak of infectious disease.”

Venkayya also expressed concern about the lack of extra capacity in the nation’s hospital and other health-care facilities to deal with a pandemic. However, Norton says expanding this capacity remains a pipedream.

“The public simply isn’t willing to fund large amounts of extra capacity,” he says. “We just don’t have the money to do that.”

Even so, while agreeing that lots more must be done before the nation is fully prepared for an outbreak, Norton finds much to commend about the Bush administration’s handling of the issue.

“There is candor about what still needs to be done, and that’s refreshing.”

As Norton sees it, one of the biggest challenges remains public apathy about the virus — a problem he blames partly on media’s initial mishandling of the issue. Because of this initially overblown reporting, many Americans, particularly younger ones between ages 18 and 30, began to doubt the threat — doubts that may ultimately prove harmful, he says.

Indeed, Norton says Americans must never lose sight of the fact that avian flu “is a real issue with the real potential for causing lasting harm to the U.S. and world economy.”

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http://www.aces.edu/department/extcomm/npa/daily/archives/003173.php

Source: Jim Langcuster, (334) 844-5686, langcjc@auburn.edu