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Flu Pandemic threatens stability; need Manhattan Project-type vaccine effort
The wealthy countries of the G-8 need to mount a Manhattan Project-style program to expand global influenza vaccine production in order to avert massive economic losses and political instability when the next pandemic hits, the author of a commentary in Thursday's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine says. Countries like the United States and Canada cannot afford to focus only on protecting the health of their own citizens, given a flu pandemic's enormous potential to claim lives, drain the global economy and trigger panic and chaos around the globe, argued author Dr. Michael Osterholm, a leading infectious disease and bioterrorism expert. "(Pandemic) influenza has the ability to literally bring this world to a screeching halt," Osterholm said Wednesday in an interview from Minneapolis, where he is director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. "Anyone who's handling this at just a country level is missing . . . the point that even if you can vaccinate your population, the collateral damage of a world in pandemic state will be so significant that they still will have tremendous, tremendous disruption and loss." Influenza experts insist sporadic pandemics are biological certainties, triggered when a strain to which humans have no immunity arises from nature to sweep the globe. Science currently has no way of predicting when a pandemic will occur or which strain will cause the next one. However, many flu experts fear the H5N1 strain rampaging through Asia may be poised to ignite the first pandemic of the 21st century. Spurred by this fear, a number of developed countries have drafted pandemic response plans with provisions to make special vaccines and stockpile antiviral drugs that experts hope will reduce the number of fatalities in a pandemic. But these measures are costly and out of the reach of most countries around the globe. Canada's Health Minister, Ujjal Dosanjh, proposed an international meeting of about 15 leading developed and developing countries to address global pandemic preparedness needs when he met with U.S. No mention of the UN. They are clearly interested in getting things done. Health Secretary Mike Leavitt in March. But those plans are currently on hold because of the Liberal government's precarious hold on power. "These are all issues sort of up in the air as a result of the current environment in Ottawa," Dosanjh admitted Wednesday. Osterholm's commentary, commissioned by the prestigious journal, calls for a massive, multinational initiative to modernize and vastly expand global flu vaccine production capacity, which currently can only produce about 330 million flu shots a year. Thats less than 5% of the worlds population. "This has to be a G-8 priority. And they have to do it for the rest of the world for their own security," he insisted. "The kind of chaos and disorder that can occur with a disease that causes this kind of impact could easily be the tipping point for the instability of a number of governments around the world, particularly as their economies implode." I've speculated before on the places that will ride out the chaos relatively unaffected if an epidemic starts to kill millions. Its a short list. The USA is at risk becuase of its dependence on imported energy and insecure borders. Otherwise the article ignores the moot issue of whether the vaccine can be produced quickly enough. More at the link. Posted by: phil_b 2005-05-05 |
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