Bush unveils $1.2b pandemic Flu plan
Foreign Desk Report

WASHINGTON—President Bush outlined a $7.1 billion strategy Tuesday to prepare for the danger of a pandemic influenza outbreak, saying he wanted to stockpile enough vaccine to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu. The President also said the United States must approve liability protection for the makers of lifesaving vaccines. He said the number of American vaccine manufacturers has plummeted because the industry has been hit with a flood of lawsuits.
Bush said no one knows when or where a deadly strain of flu will strike but "at some point we are likely to face another pandemic”. The President, in a speech at the National Institutes of Health, said the United States must be prepared to detect outbreaks anywhere in the world, stockpile vaccines and anti-viral drugs and be ready to respond at the federal, state and local levels in the event a pandemic reaches the United States.
Bush outlined a strategy that would cost $7.1 billion including:
$1.2 billion for the government to buy enough doses of the vaccine against the current strain of bird flu to protect 20 million Americans; $1 billion to stockpile more anti-viral drugs that lessen the severity of the flu symptoms; $2.8 billion to speed the development of vaccines as new strains emerge, a process that now takes months; $583 million for states and local governments to prepare emergency plans to respond to an outbreak.
Bush said a pandemic flu would be far more serious than the seasonal flu that makes hundreds of thousands of people sick ever year and sends people to their doctors for a flu shot. "I had mine," Bush said. Unlike seasonal flu, pandemic flu can kill people who are young and healthy as well as those who are frail and sick, he said. In asking Congress for money to buy vaccine, Bush said the vaccine "would not be a perfect match to the pandemic flu because the pandemic strain would probably differ somewhat from the avian flu virus it grew from. But a vaccine against the current avian flu virus would likely offer some protection against a pandemic strain and possibly save many lives in the first critical months of an outbreak”.
He also said the United States was increasing stockpiles of antiviral drugs, such as Tamiflu and Relenza. Such drugs cannot prevent people from catching the flu, but they can reduce the severity of the illness when taken within 48 hours of getting sick, he said. "At this moment there is no pandemic influenza in the United States or the world, but if history is our guide there's reason to be concerned," Bush said. "In the last century, our country and the world have been hit by three influenza pandemics, and viruses from birds contributed to all of them”. He pointed out that the 1918 pandemic killed over a half million Americans and more than 20 million people across the globe. "One-third of the US population was infected, and life expectancy in our country was reduced by 13 years.