Strategies To Prevent A Flu Pandemic
This section contains strategies to prevent a flu pandemic by a Council on Foreign Relations panel.
If influenza remains an animal problem with limited human-to-human transmission it is not a pandemic, though it continues to pose a risk. To prevent the situation from progressing to a pandemic, the following short-term strategies have been put forward:
- Culling and vaccinating livestock
- Vaccinating poultry workers against common flu
- Limiting travel in areas where the virus is found
The rationale for vaccinating poultry workers against common flu is that it reduces the probability of common influenza virus recombining with avian H5N1 virus to form a pandemic strain. Longer term strategies proposed for regions where highly pathogenic H5N1 is endemic in wild birds have included:
- changing local farming practices to increase farm hygiene and reduce contact between livestock and wild birds.
- altering farming practices in regions where animals live in close, often unsanitary quarters with people, and changing the practices of open-air "wet markets" where birds are kept for live sale and slaughtered on-site. A challenge to implementing these measures is widespread poverty, frequently in rural areas, coupled with a reliance upon raising fowl for purposes of subsistence farming or income without measures to prevent propagation of the disease.
- changing local shopping practices from purchase of live fowl to purchase of slaughtered, pre-packaged fowl.
- improving veterinary vaccine availability and cost.
Read more about this topic: Influenza Pandemic
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