U.S. Doctors Fear Avian Influenza

WASHINGTON - Feb 9/06 - SNS -- Most doctors in the United States do not believe the country is prepared for the risk of avian influenza crossing over from birds to humans, especially if it results in a flu pandemic, according to a nationwide survey of primary care clinicians by Pri-Med Research.

The survey results stand a good chance of getting media attention, driving government spending in specific directions, even though it is impossible to create a vaccine for the next flu strain which would cause a pandemic. This is because the strain does not yet exist and any vaccines stockpiled to deal with the current H5N1 strains which are crossing over into people may not work in the future.

Fewer than one in five primary care practitioners believe they are adequately equipped today to treat infected patients. Over 50% express little or no confidence in the government's ability to manage a flu pandemic at the local, state, federal or international level. Around 91% of practitioners surveyed also feel that the current availability of anti-viral medications is inadequate to meet an avian flu crisis. A substantial majority would rely on the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and their local public health authorities for guidance in responding to any outbreak.

"Primary care practitioners clearly perceive the threat of an avian flu pandemic as real and potentially overwhelming," Pri-Med Research director Anne Goodrich said. "The World Health Organization has called it 'the most serious health threat facing the world today'. The last global flu pandemic in 1918 caused the deaths of an estimated 20 million people worldwide, 675,000 of those deaths were Americans in a country with only a third its current population."