Bush updates plan to combat avian flu pandemic

President Bush outlined a new plan to spend $7.1 billion to stockpile medications to combat an outbreak of human transmissible bird flu at a speech at the National Institutes of Health. The thrust of the plan is to prepare the country to identify an outbreak and contain it as swiftly as possible. Bush also discussed efforts to develop cell-based vaccines that can be produced much faster than today's vaccines and stockpile antiviral drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza. The country expects to have 4 million doses on hand by the end of the year, less than what the World Health Organization has recommended.

Whatever the country's plans, problems abound. Roche has made it clear that it is already back-ordered more than a year on Tamiflu, and researchers are concerned that there won't be enough antiviral medicine available to blunt the global onslaught of a possible pandemic. A pandemic can only be triggered by a mutated H5N1 virus, which may not be affected by antiviral drugs or any of the vaccines currently in development. The US is also already significantly behind countries like France and the UK, where planning efforts have been far more detailed.

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