28 September 2005
EDITORIAL: Bird flu pandemic: How unprepared are we for it?
H5NI.
That is the particular strain of the avian (bird) influenza that the world’s medical and research community is looking and watching out for today.
While many of us in the Philippines are preoccupied with finding out the Political and Moral Truths, or hiding it, in the Garci case, the deadly bird flu has crept up on our neighboring Asian country, Indonesia, which has reported four confirmed deaths from the disease so far, with 17 others now in hospitals under close observation for symptoms of the pathogenic H5NI.
With God’s blessing, the Philippines remains free from the disease until now even while a less virulent strain of the avian flu was found some months back in a poultry farm in Bulacan, prompting the culling of the feathered ones to stop whatever possibility of a spread.
The World Health Organization’s chief last week said that bird flu was moving towards becoming transmissible to and by humans and that the world has “no time to waste to prevent a pandemic.” As many of us might not yet know, the last great influenza pandemic was in 1918-1919, causing an estimated 40 million to 50 million deaths.
No time to waste, and yet our politician-leaders are squandering precious funds and efforts over just about anything, instead of fully preparing for the worse and mounting as many defenses as it could for our sake.
In Europe and North America, they are stocking up on anti-virals and speeding up research on vaccine development and preparations for social and economic disruptions. This because the scientific community agrees there will only be a window of “a few weeks to contain an outbreak before a pandemic virus spreads with lethal speed.”
Now, how have we been doing in our own preparation in these 7,107 islands?
A matter of national security such as this one now staring countries all over the world in the face – and here, our national security chief himself has become, so to speak, a jailbird, courtesy of the Senate. Not to worry though, he hasn’t got the H5NI avian flu strain, that’s for sure.
That is the particular strain of the avian (bird) influenza that the world’s medical and research community is looking and watching out for today.
While many of us in the Philippines are preoccupied with finding out the Political and Moral Truths, or hiding it, in the Garci case, the deadly bird flu has crept up on our neighboring Asian country, Indonesia, which has reported four confirmed deaths from the disease so far, with 17 others now in hospitals under close observation for symptoms of the pathogenic H5NI.
With God’s blessing, the Philippines remains free from the disease until now even while a less virulent strain of the avian flu was found some months back in a poultry farm in Bulacan, prompting the culling of the feathered ones to stop whatever possibility of a spread.
The World Health Organization’s chief last week said that bird flu was moving towards becoming transmissible to and by humans and that the world has “no time to waste to prevent a pandemic.” As many of us might not yet know, the last great influenza pandemic was in 1918-1919, causing an estimated 40 million to 50 million deaths.
No time to waste, and yet our politician-leaders are squandering precious funds and efforts over just about anything, instead of fully preparing for the worse and mounting as many defenses as it could for our sake.
In Europe and North America, they are stocking up on anti-virals and speeding up research on vaccine development and preparations for social and economic disruptions. This because the scientific community agrees there will only be a window of “a few weeks to contain an outbreak before a pandemic virus spreads with lethal speed.”
Now, how have we been doing in our own preparation in these 7,107 islands?
A matter of national security such as this one now staring countries all over the world in the face – and here, our national security chief himself has become, so to speak, a jailbird, courtesy of the Senate. Not to worry though, he hasn’t got the H5NI avian flu strain, that’s for sure.
