June 8, 2006-Panama

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June 8, 2006-Panama

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REMARKS BY:
Michael O. Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services

http://www.hhs.gov/news/speech/2006/060608.html

PLACE:
Panama

DATE:
June 8, 2006

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by the Honorable Mike Leavitt Secretary of Health and Human Services Health Ministers of Central America (COMISCA)
I am delighted to be here with you this morning.

I'd like to acknowledge:

My host, Panama's Health Minister, Camilo Allenye,
My counterparts, the health ministers of Central America, and
Distinguished guests.
We come together at a time when the world is watching the spread of a deadly virus in birds across the globe. We do not know if the H5N1 virus, which has infected 225 people and killed 128, according to the latest WHO figures, will be the virus that triggers the next pandemic. But we do know there is reason for concern and reason to prepare.

Pandemics happen:

They are a fact of biology.
They are a testament of history.
They are a fact of viruses mutating and attacking.
The history of pandemics is the history of humanity.

Pandemics reshape nations.

There have been 10 pandemics in 300 years: Panama may have been the site of origin for the major influenza outbreak of 1857-1858.

There have been three pandemics in last 100 years.

The 1918 pandemic was catastrophic. That pandemic brought terror and loss around the world. It ravaged towns and communities across the United States, including my hometown.

The pandemic also brought devastating consequences to Central America.

It is estimated that, in all of Latin America, about 766,000 people died during the Great Pandemic of 1918. It was especially virulent in rural areas of Central and South America, and it touched many nations deeply.

In Brazil, about 33 percent of the population of Rio de Janeiro died when the pandemic came to Brazil.

In El Salvador, about 20,000 people were said to have been afflicted in the city of San Salvador.

In Guatemala, the Great Pandemic touched Guatemala at the same time that its citizens were dealing with yellow fever. Nearly 50,000 of Guatemala's 1.24 million residents perished by the time the pandemic passed.

If a pandemic comes, it will come to Central America. There is no reason to believe that we in the 21st century will be spared any more than others throughout history. When it comes to pandemics, we are overdue and under-prepared.

Panama Preparedness

I want to talk about pandemic preparedness in Panama.

Panama occupies a key flyway for migratory birds and is a critical crossroads for people in the hemisphere. If infected birds or people appear here, then they could easily travel either south or north.

Panama is a key partner for the United States in preparedness, and I appreciate Panama's leadership in this area.

Panama's Gorgas Memorial Institute is a critical part of a network of worldwide surveillance.

For more than 80 years, the institute has been the place for a productive partnership between our countries in the fight against infectious diseases. It was founded on that basis. The Gorgas Institute was created through an initiative by Panama to give tribute to Dr. William Gorgas, then Surgeon General of the United States Army. Dr. Gorgas helped eradicate yellow fever here, a key factor in enabling the Panama Canal to be constructed.

We added to that proud partnership this past April, when I signed an agreement with your health minister and the Director of the Gorgas Institute Jorge Motta to work together on pandemic preparedness and expand cooperative efforts to enhance the health of the people throughout Central America.

This Memorandum of Understanding—and $775,000 in funding—enables the exchange of technical experts and material to enhance preparedness and rapid response to infectious disease threats; it will also help to promote effective public-health measures.

United States health experts are working with their counterparts in Panama to enhance:

Surveillance capacity,
Laboratory testing,
Diagnosis,
Treatment, and
Epidemiological investigations.
In addition, the Smithsonian and Tropical Research Institute in Panama has many decades' worth of scientific data and expertise on migratory bird patterns, which can help in our joint efforts to prevent or identify outbreaks of avian influenza in the region.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has established a new program, funded with $161,000, to help the government of Panama prevent the spread of avian influenza in its poultry industry through new training and equipment.

To further increase regional preparedness, the United States works closely with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). This past April, USAID and PAHO hosted a regional workshop in Panama City on improving avian influenza preparedness.

In addition, USAID has a $1.7 million program to work through PAHO on regional avian influenza efforts.

There is much being done, and I applaud my fellow health ministers for the steps you have already taken. But there is much more we must do, and that is why we are here today.

U.S. Preparedness

In the United States, we are taking the threat of a pandemic very seriously.

The President has mobilized our Nation, and at his direction, we have been traveling to all of our states and territories to host pandemic summits with local leaders from:

Government,
Business,
Education,
Health care, and
Other areas.
We have nearly completed all of those summits. State and local communities are developing preparedness plans and beginning to exercise them.

My purpose in meeting with them is to emphasize that preparedness is primarily a local and state responsibility. Any community that fails to prepare with the expectation that the federal or state government will rescue them will be tragically mistaken.

The same can be said globally for any Nation that fails to prepare and relies on others to rescue them.

In the United States, we have been making significant investments in vaccines, antivirals, and research. Our goal is to develop a library of live vaccine candidates against all known influenza strains with pandemic potential.

To increase the capacity and speed of vaccine production, I recently awarded more than $1 billion in contracts to develop cell-based technology for vaccines against both seasonal and pandemic influenza.

We are also stockpiling antivirals. The United States Strategic National Stockpile now contains about 6.2 million regimens of Tamiflu capsules. By the end of this year, we expect to have about 15.4 million more.

We are also investing in research, which is likely to benefit not only the citizens of the United States, but also citizens of the world.

We have developed a new, more rapid diagnostic test for H5 strains. We are also looking at ways to use adjuvant, or dose-sparing, technology to stretch vaccines further in order to reach more people.

We are looking at mitigation strategies should a pandemic break out. We have developed some interesting modeling about controlling influenza in a community through social distancing and other techniques. We intend to take that information, share it, peer review it, and begin to spread it for not just within the United States, but also throughout the world.

Global Preparedness

All of these actions show promise. The challenge now is to turn that promise into true preparedness.

No nation, no region, can do it alone. Responding to a pandemic will demand the cooperation of the world community. It is our doctrine in the United States that when there is risk anywhere, there is danger everywhere.

For that reason, the United States has pledged $334 million to help other nations prepare for, and respond to, outbreaks of avian influenza.

Last September, President Bush announced the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza (IPAPI) at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. Members of IPAPI seek to work with all concerned states to limit the spread of any highly pathogenic influenza strain.

We have just concluded a successful meeting of IPAPI in Vienna, Austria, which emphasized the point that avian flu is not only a health matter, but also an economic, security, and social issue. The meeting underscored the fact that the international community has come together to combat a common enemy.

The United States also fully supports additional partnerships with other nations and international organizations such as:

The World Health Organization (WHO), and
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
We have made sizeable investments in creating a worldwide network of surveillance with international labs such as Gorgas, but also with:

The Institut Pasteur (Southeast Asia and Africa), and
The International Center for Disease Research in Bangladesh (South Asian region).
We are funding the Specimen Transport Fund, managed by the WHO Secretariat, which will assist affected countries in getting samples for analysis to WHO reference laboratories in a timely and secure manner.

We support early, voluntary compliance with the revised International Health Regulations (IHR). IHRs will help countries and the WHO Secretariat to intervene early, and thereby possibly prevent or delay a pandemic, as well as manage a pandemic as effectively as possible, should one occur.

We applaud Taiwan's recent announcement that it will comply with the requirements of the IHR and its other efforts in preparing against avian influenza. My Department of Health and Human Services regularly collaborates with scientists and technical experts from Taiwan. Many of you here have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and I invite you and your departments to work with them as well.

Conclusion

I'd like to leave you today with this thought: We are in a race. We are in a race against a fast moving virulent virus with the potential to cause a pandemic.

It is only a matter of time before we discover H5N1 in the Americas. The migration patterns of birds make its appearance here almost inevitable.

The arrival of the first H5N1 bird should not be cause for alarm or panic. It does not mean that a pandemic is on our doorstep. It should, however, motivate us to pick up the pace, to renew pandemic preparedness on every front, at every level, and in every Nation.

As we do so, we will be more prepared today than we were yesterday, and more prepared tomorrow than we are today.

Thank you.

Last revised: June 9, 2006
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