Hospitals have too little capacity to deal with the huge numbers of people who would become sick and the U.S. Health and Human Services Department does not have a plan for dealing with an epidemic, the experts said.
The U.S. population has no immunity and therefore no protection against this deadly virus," Pavia said. Although many levels of government are paying increased attention to the problem, the United States remains woefully unprepared for an influenza pandemic that could kill millions of Americans," said Dr. Andrew Pavia, chairman of the Infectious Disease Society of America's Pandemic Influenza Task Force, to Reuters.
"Clearly, we need a much larger supply of drugs and vaccine to control a flu pandemic. We need to build up U.S. manufacturing capacity so that we are not dependent on other countries to meet our needs," Pavia said in remarks prepared for a hearing of the health subcommittee of the House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee.
The H5N1 strain of avian flu has killed 37 people in Vietnam, 12 in Thailand and four in Cambodia. It could sicken up to 20 percent of the world's population if it acquires the ability to pass easily among people, says influenza expert Dr. Albert Osterhaus of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
