Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2709

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Neergaard L.
Bush Outlines $7.1B Flu-Fighting Strategy
Associated Press 2005 Nov 1
http://www.healthcareforums.org/viewtopic.php?t=19030&sid=6f167e31a265c7eb62d9ae5fb8cd6b22

Keywords:
Bird flu H5N1 pandemic

Notes:

Ralph Faggotter’s Comments:

Bird Flu is the new Osama.

Notice how George W Bush’s speech is peppered with the same phrases which are interchangeable with those used to discuss military/terrorist threats.

For example-
1/. “…no one knows when or where a deadly strain of flu will strike,…”
2/. “… the U.S. must be prepared to detect outbreaks anywhere in the world…”
3/. “…global transparency is necessary and that countries must immediately share information…”
4/. “Our country has been given fair warning of this danger to our homeland and time to prepare,”

This tendency to impose a paranoid military template on a potential health issue enables Mr Bush to remain within his narrow comfort zone, but could become counter-productive as the rest of the world attempts to grapple with such complex health issues.

Furthermore-

An ominous reference to – “…the growing burden of litigation…” suggests that Mr Bush will use the Bird-Flu fear to try to introduce legislation which enhances the protection of pharmaceutical companies against litigants who have suffered adverse effects from pharmaceutical products.

Perhaps he has one eye on the long list of impending court cases over Vioxx.

Remember, the pharmaceutical lobby is one of the most active and cashed-up lobby groups in Washington.

Full text:

Below are 2 published versions from AP of the same story.

Bush Requests $7.1 Billion
To Prepare for Flu Pandemic

Associated Press
November 1, 2005 1:02 p.m.

WASHINGTON — President Bush, warning that the U.S. is at risk in a possible world-wide flu outbreak, said Tuesday he is asking Congress for $7.1 billion to prepare for a possible flu pandemic, including $1.2 billion to stockpile vaccines to protect 20 million Americans against the current strain of bird flu.

The president also called on Congress to approve liability protection for the makers of lifesaving vaccines. Mr. 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.” He said “the growing burden of litigation” is one of the main obstacles to production.

The president, in a speech at the National Institutes of Health, said the U.S. must be prepared to detect outbreaks anywhere in the world, stockpile vaccines and antiviral drugs and be ready to respond at the federal, state and local levels in the event a pandemic reaches the U.S.

Mr. 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 antiviral 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.

President Bush said that global transparency is necessary and that countries must immediately share information when cases develop and provide samples to the World Health Organization. The U.S. set up a new Web site (www.pandemicflu.gov3) on pandemic flu and avian influenza.

“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,” Mr. 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 U.S. population was infected, and life expectancy in our country was reduced by 13 years. “The 1918 pandemic was followed by pandemics in 1957 and 1968, which killed tens of thousands of Americans and millions across the world,” Mr. Bush said.

Bird flu has been documented in Asia and has spread to Europe but hasn’t reached the U.S., the president said. “Our country has been given fair warning of this danger to our homeland and time to prepare,” he said.

The H5N1 strain of avian flu has killed millions of birds in Asia and has recently spread to Europe. It has infected more than 120 people and killed 62 in Southeast Asia, but the human cases have been linked to those who’ve had close and frequent contact with dead birds, a point the president stressed in an attempt to defuse panic about a human pandemic in the U.S.

Earlier, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said that there is a possibility that a pandemic would force restrictions on international travel and commerce — one reason the president’s plan stresses improved vaccine manufacturing in the U.S. Today, most of the world’s vaccine against regular winter flu, including much of that used by Americans each flu season, is manufactured in factories in Britain and Europe.

The U.S. has signed contracts with Sanofi-Aventis and Chiron Corp. to produce vaccines based on the H5N1 avian strain. The U.S. hopes to have enough vaccines to protect 20 million Americans and enough antivirals for another 20 million. Mr. Bush said vaccine makers would have to perfect the cell-culture process in order to produce enough vaccine to protect all Americans, or roughly 300 million people.

China Pledges Openness

Meanwhile, China said it has learned from its mistakes in the SARS outbreak and pledged complete openness to help prevent a global outbreak of bird flu.

China was heavily criticized during the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome for initially covering up the illness. Now Beijing says it is committed to quickly investigating and reporting possible bird-flu cases to the public and world-health groups. “From SARS, we see that no … information can be hidden,” China’s disease-control director Qi Xiaoqiu said Monday through a translator while visiting the U.S. “We have policies to encourage farmers to report possible outbreaks.” Mr. Qi said China has provided subsidies for farmers who quickly report sick birds to authorities.

Chinese health officials have also signed a memo of understanding on U.S.-China cooperation with U.S. Health chief Mike Leavitt. China’s biggest drug maker, Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group, has also contacted Roche Holding AG about sublicensing the right to make Tamiflu.

China has reported three bird-flu outbreaks in poultry over the past month. No human cases have been reported.

Fighting Bird Flu Could Cost $102 Million

Meanwhile, Pacific Rim health officials met in Australia for a second day Tuesday to discuss ways to fight the virus.

In Brisbane, a United Nations official said fighting bird flu in impoverished Southeast Asian nations could cost US$102 million over the next two to three years.

“If the disease spreads from eastern Europe into Africa, then just for emergency support we’ll require an additional US$75 million,” said Subhash Morvaria from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s regional office in Bangkok, Thailand.

Mr. Morvaria urged nations to fight the disease in birds as a first line of defense against it mutating into a human flu virus that could trigger a deadly global pandemic. “As long as the disease remains in the domestic poultry sector, there is going to be a threat to humans. So the focus has to be in the animals. Even if a pandemic occurs, the problem will not go away as long as the disease remains in domestic poultry,” he said.

Meanwhile, signs of bird flu were detected at a duck farm in western Japan. Tests on ten ducks suspected of bird flu showed they were infected with an H4 strain of the virus, which has no history of human transmission, according to Katsunori Tanaka, an Osaka livestock farming official. However, officials were still testing another 47 ducks at the same farm, after preliminary tests showed some of the birds may be infected, Mr. Tanaka said.

The latest case follows the announcement Monday that authorities detected signs of bird flu at a farm in northern Japan and planned to kill 82,000 chickens.

In Canada, senior government officials said Monday that nearly three dozen wild ducks from the provinces of Quebec and Manitoba have tested positive for H5 influenza, though further tests will be required to determine if it is the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus. None of the ducks is ill, said Jim Clark, of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, at a news conference.

Nov 1, 5:15 PM EST

Bush Outlines $7.1B Flu-Fighting Strategy

By LAURAN NEERGAARD
AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush outlined a $7.1 billion strategy Tuesday to prepare for a possible worldwide super-flu outbreak, aiming to overhaul the vaccine industry so eventually every American could be inoculated within six months of a pandemic’s beginning.

Such a huge change would take years to implement – Bush’s goal is 2010 – and his plan drew immediate fire from critics who said it wouldn’t provide enough protection in the meantime. States, too, got an unpleasant surprise, ordered to purchase millions of doses of an anti-flu drug with their own money.

The long-awaited strategy also stresses expanded attempts to detect and contain the next super-flu before it reaches the United States, with particular attention to parts of Asia that are influenza incubators – a global focus that flu specialists have insisted the government adopt.

“Early detection is our first line of defense,” Bush said in a speech at the National Institutes of Health. He called on other countries to admit when super-flu strains occur within their borders. “No nation can afford to ignore this threat,” he said.

At the same time, Bush sought to reassure a public jittery over the spread of bird flu, called H5N1, which has killed at least 62 people in Asia since 2003 and caused the death or destruction of tens of millions of birds.

There is no evidence that a human pandemic, of H5N1 or any other super-strain, is about to start, Bush said repeatedly.

Still, there have been three flu pandemics in the last century and the world is overdue for another. Concern is growing that the bird flu could provide the spark if it one day mutates so that it can spread easily from person to person.

“Our country has been given fair warning of this danger to our homeland, and time to prepare,” Bush said.

Topping Bush’s strategy:

-$1.2 billion to stockpile enough vaccine against the current H5N1 flu strain to protect 20 million Americans, the estimated number of health workers and other first-responders involved in a pandemic.

-$1 billion for the drugs Tamiflu and Relenza, which can treat and, in some cases, prevent flu infection. Enough to treat 44 million people and prevent infection in 6 million others is headed for the federal stockpile. States were told to buy 31 million treatment courses, but Bush is funding only a quarter of the states’ anticipated bill.

-$2.8 billion to speed production of pandemic vaccines – including better-matched strains – by learning to manufacture them in easier-to-handle cell cultures, instead of today’s slow method that relies on millions of chicken eggs.

-$251 million for international preparations, including improving early-warning systems to spot human infections with novel flu strains.

-$100 million for state preparations, including determining how to deliver stockpiled medicines directly to patients.

-$56 million to test poultry and wild birds for H5N1 or other novel flu strains entering the U.S. bird population.

-A call for Congress to provide liability protection for makers of a pandemic vaccine, which unlike shots against the regular winter flu would be experimental, largely untested.

Bush’s announcement came after his administration was battered by criticism over its lethargic response to Hurricane Katrina.

Public health specialists, briefed on the strategy but awaiting details, called it a good start.

“Clearly this is the No. 1 public health issue on the radar screen,” said Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, who advises the government on infectious disease threats.

But it’s not strong enough, said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who helped lead Senate passage of $8 billion in emergency funding for pandemic preparations last month.

“Stockpiles alone aren’t enough without the capacity to make use of them,” he said, calling for steps to help states, cities and hospitals prepare for a flood of panicked patients.

“There is a gaping hole” in the plan, added Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who said the nation should stockpile enough Tamiflu for half the population, not the quarter that would be covered if the states added their share under Bush’s plan.

The states’ contribution will be difficult, said Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, chairman of the National Governors Association. “They expect us to pay 75 cents on a dollar for flu medicine – that’s going to be a tough pill to swallow,” he said through a spokeswoman.

The states’ collective tab would reach $510 million, said Kim Elliott, deputy director of the nonpartisan Trust for America’s Health. She worried that some wouldn’t buy any, and that others wouldn’t share their Tamiflu stash if a pandemic struck in a part of the country that ran out.

“It depends on where you live and the state of your state’s budget as to whether or not you might receive a treatment drug,” she said.

—-

On the Net:

Government’s pandemic flu site: http://www.pandemicflu.gov

Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2709

Announcements