Firms at bird flu summit are urged to plan for the worst
The World Health Organisation says that the threat is imminent and we must all prepare. By Tracey Boles
ORTAKABINS for stranded staff to sleep in, the closure of canteens and workplace gyms, and setting up employees so they can workP from home are some of the emergency measures British companies would have to take in an outbreak of bird flu. It could even become a disciplinary offence to come into work once infected with the deadly bug.
The first human case of H5N1 avian flu was reported in 1997 but many businesses are only now starting to plan how they would cope with a pandemic that could result in 30% of their staff being off work sick for six months.
British Airways, which began studying the effects of a pandemic in April last year, is ahead of many other companies. But the airline is still working out how it would keep flying with a quarter of its staff struck down by flu. A spokeswoman said: “We are looking at what it means and how we would use our resources.” Glaxo Smith Kline says it is making preparations but has “no grand plan” yet.
Last week, the Royal College of Surgeons hosted an “avian flu summit” designed to shock business into action. Delegates from 300 firms in the financial, transport, retail and manufacturing sectors heard what they should be including in their “disaster plans”. The keynote speaker, David Salisbury, head of immunisation at the Department of Health, said businesses should be planning for the “worst case scenario” in which 25% of the population, or 14.6m people, would come down with the flu. Judging by previous influenza pandemics, between 0.2% and 2% of the population would die, according to the World Health Organisation.
Small firms could be particularly hard hit as workers fall ill or stay off to look after sick relatives, scientific models by the independent Health Protection Agency show.
Firms would have to act swiftly to halt the spread of the disease if they wanted to keep trading. But many have yet to put contingency measures in place, and are hungry for guidance. Thursday’s conference — called Pre-Pandemic Planning, Preparation & Policy for Business — sold out so quickly that another one is planned for the end of February by the organiser, the risk-management training group Business Forums International (BFI).
Elizabeth Smith at BFI said most firms’ bird-flu action plans were “at the embryonic stage”. But many of the delegates she saw last week were from companies with developed plans ensuring that they were on the right track, as well as those that wanted to update their information on the virus.
There are 15 different types of bird flu. Spanish flu, which killed up to 30m people between 1918 and 1919, was a bird flu. H5N1 is the strain now causing worldwide alarm because of its ability to jump from birds to several other species. Transported by migratory birds, it is lethal to poultry and has infected many people who have been in close contact with sick birds, killing 79, most of them in southeast Asia. But it has yet to mutate into a form that can jump from person to person. If it does, the result is likely to be a global pandemic.
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ORTAKABINS for stranded staff to sleep in, the closure of canteens and workplace gyms, and setting up employees so they can workP from home are some of the emergency measures British companies would have to take in an outbreak of bird flu. It could even become a disciplinary offence to come into work once infected with the deadly bug.
The first human case of H5N1 avian flu was reported in 1997 but many businesses are only now starting to plan how they would cope with a pandemic that could result in 30% of their staff being off work sick for six months.
British Airways, which began studying the effects of a pandemic in April last year, is ahead of many other companies. But the airline is still working out how it would keep flying with a quarter of its staff struck down by flu. A spokeswoman said: “We are looking at what it means and how we would use our resources.” Glaxo Smith Kline says it is making preparations but has “no grand plan” yet.
Last week, the Royal College of Surgeons hosted an “avian flu summit” designed to shock business into action. Delegates from 300 firms in the financial, transport, retail and manufacturing sectors heard what they should be including in their “disaster plans”. The keynote speaker, David Salisbury, head of immunisation at the Department of Health, said businesses should be planning for the “worst case scenario” in which 25% of the population, or 14.6m people, would come down with the flu. Judging by previous influenza pandemics, between 0.2% and 2% of the population would die, according to the World Health Organisation.
Small firms could be particularly hard hit as workers fall ill or stay off to look after sick relatives, scientific models by the independent Health Protection Agency show.
Firms would have to act swiftly to halt the spread of the disease if they wanted to keep trading. But many have yet to put contingency measures in place, and are hungry for guidance. Thursday’s conference — called Pre-Pandemic Planning, Preparation & Policy for Business — sold out so quickly that another one is planned for the end of February by the organiser, the risk-management training group Business Forums International (BFI).
Elizabeth Smith at BFI said most firms’ bird-flu action plans were “at the embryonic stage”. But many of the delegates she saw last week were from companies with developed plans ensuring that they were on the right track, as well as those that wanted to update their information on the virus.
There are 15 different types of bird flu. Spanish flu, which killed up to 30m people between 1918 and 1919, was a bird flu. H5N1 is the strain now causing worldwide alarm because of its ability to jump from birds to several other species. Transported by migratory birds, it is lethal to poultry and has infected many people who have been in close contact with sick birds, killing 79, most of them in southeast Asia. But it has yet to mutate into a form that can jump from person to person. If it does, the result is likely to be a global pandemic.
story continues
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