CARE and InterAction Hosted a Town Hall Meeting on
Avian Flu
December 12, 2005

 

On Monday, December 12, CARE and InterAction hosted a town hall meeting on avian flu at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, in downtown Miami. The panel included Dr. Steven Monroe, Associate Director of Laboratory Sciences at the Center for Disease Control, Dr. Gordon Dickinson, Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and the Miami Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and Barbara Wallace, Co-Director of the CARE-CDC Health Initiative. The panel was moderated by Todd D. Shelton, InterAction’s Director of Public Policy and Advocacy. Local sponsors included MIAMIntelligence and the Jay Weiss Center for Social Medicine and Health Inequalities.

Attendees were welcomed by Bernard J. Fogel, M.D., Advisor to the President and Dean Emeritus of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Monroe then began the discussion by explaining differences between flu types A, B, and C. Type A is the most likely to cause pandemic flu. There are three characteristics that determine whether a virus will cause pandemic flu. First, there must be a novel virus -- this particular virus must not have circulated among people recently. Second, the virus must be able to cause severe illness in people. Third, it must be able to spread effectively from person to person. Virus A/H5N1, which is currently circulating in South Asia and has been recently reported in Turkey, Kazakhstan and Eastern Europe, has met the first two of these three characteristics. Monroe went on to discuss the potential impact a pandemic flu could cause in the U.S. as well as the Centers for Disease Control's pandemic flu preparedness plan. He concluded by noting that, "we are never going to be able to stop a pandemic in its tracks... but what we can do is slow the spread and mitigate the impact."

Dr. Dickenson warned that while pandemic flu may be looming over the horizon, doctors and the medical community are currently fighting an uphill battle, as they do every fall and winter, to vaccinate against the seasonal flu. The difficulty comes in the public's perceived risk of getting sick. He then noted some of the things that doctors and individuals can do to lessen the impact of seasonal and pandemic flu: ask doctors to write only necessary prescriptions, do not touch your eyes, nose, or face, which is how germs are frequently transmitted, wash your hands frequently and thoroughly, cover your coughs and sneezes properly, and if you are sick, do not go to work.

Wallace introduced CARE to the audience and then turned to outlining what CARE has done already to respond to the avian flu on the frontlines. She reminded the audience that, "Avian flu is a potential problem for all of us in the future. But it is a problem for poor people in Asia now…Most of these losses have been borne by poor farmers in Asia – the kind of people who keep small flocks of chickens in their backyard, as one of their only sources of cash and food." CARE believes that the most strategic approach is to proactively fight avian flu at its source, while also building defenses at home. She concluded by noting that, "the US government is constructing expensive and uncertain defenses at home, but allowing the frontlines to remain exposed. The poor countries of the world cannot meet this challenge without our help. I hope that all of you will do what you can to convince our government to provide the resources and technical knowledge they need – because by doing this, they will protect us all."

For further information, contact Jennifer Kurz at InterAction at jkurz@interaction.org or Mariano DeGuzman at CARE at mdeguzman@care.org.