Points To Ponder

Excerpts from How To Prepare For A Pandemic
- from Time magazine's May 18 2009 issue


"A virulent flu pandemic...would cause health-care systems to crash like an overloaded website. Professor Richard Coker of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has spent the past five years examining the preparedness of various countries for a pandemic. He says even developed countries do not have enough hospital beds, staff and equipment to handle the expected surge during a worldwide outbreak."

"...while countries in...Southeast Asia...have detailed preparedness plans for flu that adhere to WHO guidelines, says Coker, the question is, "When it comes down to it, can you actually implement your strategy? Do you have the resources? And if you do have the resources, can you allocate them properly? And the answer we're finding tends to be no."

"But there are international models the U.S. can follow. Hong Kong... has 2 million courses of Tamiflu, three times the city's population.
... Holiday camps on the fringes of the city have been set up to serve as isolation wards, and the city has invested in epidemiology labs and more hospital beds. "Hong Kong really is the international gold standard when it comes to dealing with infectious disease." "

"As a result of jet travel and international trade, a new pathogen managed to seed itself in more than 20 countries in less than 2 weeks."

"H1N1 wasn't a true test of our mettle but a warning shot. "We should look at this as a wake-up call, not one more snooze alarm." "