The most effective antidote to avian flu is Tamiflu. It is available from Doctorcall at £50 per dose. To purchase supplies or for more information, call Peter Mills on 020 7291 6680.
Coping with a flu pandemic
In 2006 a group of leading UK companies set up a working party called Survive to investigate the likelihood of a flu pandemic and what its impact would be on British organisations.
They asked questions like: How likely a pandemic actually is? How many people would be affected? How quickly it would spread? How many people would be off work at the same time? What would happen to Britain’s transport network, schools, banking…and what would happen to organisations like their own?
The working party’s conclusions
Their conclusions were startling and ominous. They concluded that
- a major pandemic is very likely – it is a case of ‘when’ not ‘if’
- the most likely cause would be a mutation of ‘bird flu’ which has happened before – currently anxiety is focused on the H5N1 avian flu virus
- the spread would be very rapid – within 15 weeks a minimum of 25% of the population would be affected (a total of 13 million cases) with a worst case scenario of 50%.
- the effects on individuals would probably be very severe with sufferers unable to work for up to a fortnight and with many thousands of deaths – estimates were in the range 50,000-750,000 depending on the severity of the virus.
- at the peak of the epidemic up to 30% of any organisation’s workforce could be absent at the same time.
They foresaw drastic implications for everything from production to service delivery, systems maintenance, banking and payments, the legal implications of missing deadlines and much more.
An independent and objective view
Perhaps you are thinking that this sounds like scaremongering. But the
fact is, the working party was high-powered, independent, objective and
motivated by desire to find out the facts and probabilities – there was
absolutely no commercial benefit to them They stated ‘There is no doubt
that a flu pandemic will occur’ You can read their research and recommendations
in a booklet entitled ‘Flu Pandemic Guidelines for Business’ available
via www.survive.com.
Subsequently a group of more than 70 companies in the financial sector led by the Financial Services Authority, the Bank of England and the Treasury conducted a major exercise simulating a pandemic and learning lessons about how they could best respond to its impact. You can read about this on www.fsa.gov.uk.
Meanwhile the US Health and Human Services Department concluded that the likelihood is ‘very high’.
In Britain, the Chief Medical Officer of Health said it is ‘a case of when not if’ a pandemic will occur. You can read more about this on www.dh.gov.flupandemic
There is no vaccine
There is no vaccine to combat a pandemic - the flu strain which would
cause the pandemic would be a new one and months would elapse before scientists
could analyse it and a new vaccine be produced in quantity. By then the
damage would have been done.
What should you do
The grim conclusions above made the second part of the working party’s
work all the more important. How can organisations best combat an epidemic?
What precautions should they take to limit its impact?
Although there is no vaccination against bird flu there is an antidote which confers a degree of immunity by stopping the virus spreading through the body, lessening the seriousness of the illness and helping to prevent transmission to colleagues and family. It is called Tamiflu.
This is where Doctorcall comes in. We can supply you with Tamiflu. We can advise you on essential health and hygiene measures to take. And when a epidemic strikes we can supervise the administration of Tamiflu to your staff and provide other essential medical assistance.
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