How to Spend Money to Prevent Bird Flu

The prevention of H5N1 bird flu outbreaks in poultry and humans is essential in the effort to prevent pandemic flu from occurring.

Countries where bird flu is endemic are generally developing countries that lack adequate healthcare facilities and infrastructure to rapidly respond to outbreaks. In addition, the level of education in these countries is usually low, making communicating the risk of getting bird flu difficult. Underlying these problems is poverty that drives people to eat infected poultry or resist culling infected poultry. To top it off, some countries affected by bird flu are also afflicted by violent conflicts.

The following measures are an example of what agencies and governments will likely spend money on to get countries prepared for bird flu outbreaks and respond to them quickly.

• Raising awareness on how to prevent bird flu.
• Vaccination of poultry.
• Updating laboratories and hospitals to be able to detect bird flu quickly, in humans and animals.
• Early treatment of bird flu with anti viral drugs such as Tamiflu.
• Compensation to farmers who lose poultry due to culling.
• Border controls to prevent contaminated poultry products from spreading to neighboring countries.

Sources:

• Jason Gale and Damien Ryan. Bird Flu Fight Will Cost More than $1.9 Billion, UN Envoy Says. Bloomberg News. September 18, 2006.