December 17, 2007
Tis the Season - Flu Season, That Is
A couple of days ago I received this avian flu alert in my email from an online drugstore as part their tamiflu promotion. In addition to Asia, West Africa has an outbreak in the poultry population, made more ominous due to the voodoo practice of drinking chicken blood.
There are new human cases in Indonesia, Vietnam, and China, and it looks like Pakistan has more than one bomb we need to worry about.
From the comments at Effect Measure, where we always turn for accurate public health information:
Pakistan, a human cluster in a remote, low-intensity war zone, an ungovernable (but not uncommunicated) area, a very powerful national poultry lobby, an authoritarian central government--formula for disaster. Political unrest in both of these locations makes good public health measures hard to institutute.
The politically turbulent, repressive Myanmar reported it's first death too, with much positive reinforcement from WHO. However, Revere notes:
But there is a curious coda to the WHO news story (a story WHO clearly wanted told, so we assume they also want this part told, too). Cordingly observes that flu season was upon us, that birds got the flu, too, even before humans, and because of wild bird migration and human caused poultry movement (legal and illegal) bird flu will continue to spread unless ... unless what?"This virus will continue. We cannot fight it on a public health front, it depends on how farmyards and chickens are raised and that is a long-term fight," he said.
What's the take home lesson here? What does it mean to say we "cannot fight it on the public health front"? Vaccines for humans and poultry are surely weapons on the public health front. More importantly, however, public health and social service systems are the public health front. I would think an essential message here would be that along with trying to stop a pandemic emerging from the current panzootic of avian influenza, an effort that is likely to fall short, we should be preparing for the consequences of a pandemic.
That means turning our attention to the global, national and local public health front. Or am I missing something?
Here's an up to date disaster preparedness report. If any of you were caught for hours in traffic because of the snowstorm in Boston last week, consider it a grim preview of the possibility of evacuating a major city in the face of a disaster more ominous than ten fluffy inches of non toxic snow.
Photo note: Light on bird
Posted by Dakota at December 17, 2007 07:09 AM