Fortresses Against Flu

Washington politicians were so spooked by the government’s abysmal response to Hurricane Katrina that they have worked themselves into overdrive about preparing for a possible influenza pandemic.

That is mostly a good thing. No country has enough medicines or vaccines to control a widespread outbreak of the avian influenza now circulating in Asia, should that virus mutate to become easily transmissible among humans. But in their rush to barricade against this uncertain threat, leaders of the developed nations need to make sure that they don’t slip into a fortress mentality that protects the home folks while letting an epidemic break loose in Asia and rage through the developing world.

A draft of the Bush administration’s long-gestating plan for coping with pandemic flu calls for stockpiling antiviral drugs and beefing up domestic vaccine production capacity. But it acknowledges that under emergency conditions, supplies in the industrialized countries would not be adequate to meet the requests for help from poor countries. The best answer is to stop any virus from spreading in the first place. Unfortunately, control efforts are lagging on the front lines in Asia. Vietnam has scaled back its culling of potentially infected flocks, mostly because there is no money to compensate farmers. Indonesia’s less-expensive policy of vaccinating chickens could lead to the spread of infected but asymptomatic birds. Cambodia and Laos have such weak health care programs that an epidemic could start before international health authorities were even aware if it.

The problem is mostly lack of resources. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has been able to raise only $30 million of the $100 million it seeks to slow the spread of avian flu in chickens. This is shortsighted in the extreme.

It is encouraging that top U.S. officials are appraising the situation in key Asian countries this week, and that an international meeting on flu preparations was convened recently at the State Department. The draft plan calls for increased surveillance of the virus abroad and for international consultation on containing an initial outbreak wherever it occurs.

Any country’s best defense against a pandemic may lie far from its own shores.