United States Unprepared for a Major Flu Pandemic
As of November, 2005, the United States is woefully under-equipped to deal with a possible flu pandemic. Mike Leavitt, US Health and Human Services Secretary, stated that the US doesn't have the manufacturing capacity to produce the required 300 million courses to serve the American population. "What we all learned from (Hurricane) Katrina is that sometimes we have to think very clearly about the unthinkable," Leavitt said. "We're not as prepared as we need to be. ...We will not have enough for everyone." In fact, they have enough doses for 4.3 million people.
In a speech to the National Institutes of Health, President Bush unveilled a $7.1 billion plan to prepare a limited number of vaccines and to handle detection and containment of an outbreak. Considering the possible global devastation such a pandemic could cause, it seems a paltry sum when compared to the $300 billion he has spent on the "War on Terror." The government is operating on a worst case scenario of 92 million Americans falling ill to the disease. The health care infrastructure would be swamped and the impact on the economy would be tremendous.