Australia, Singapore lead bird flu pandemic test
By Grant McCool
The Star, 5 May 2006

DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) - Australia and Singapore will lead an international exercise in June to test preparedness for a possible avian flu pandemic, officials said on Thursday. 

The exercise will test how authorities react to possible human-to-human spread of the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu, international arrangements for emergency management and especially communications, according to a document presented at a three-day Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Vietnam's central city of Danang. 

"We will build the exercise as much as possible to reflect what could take place in the real world should a human pandemic occur," Australian security official Helena Studdert said on the sidelines of the 21-member group's meeting    of    health   and   agriculture

ministers to discuss bird flu. 

She said the round-the-clock exercise scheduled for June 7 and June 8 would be centred in the Australian capital of Canberra and be co-facilitated by Singapore. Six APEC members -- Japan, Chile, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and Indonesia -- have agreed to take on primary roles and eight others were described as secondary participants. 

Scientists fear the H5N1 bird flu virus, which has killed 113 people out of 205 infections in nine countries since 2003, could mutate into a form that jumps easily between people and start a global flu pandemic. 

Although the disease has spread among birds in 45 countries, human infections are relatively rare and the virus is difficult for humans to contract. 

BUSINESS HOURS  The June exercise would be conducted during normal business hours, said Australian emergency management official Neil Head, who is among dozens attending the APEC ministerial meeting that began in Vietnam on Thursday and ends on Saturday. 

"You definitely won't see people running around in masks," said Head. "It is very important that we do something that involves people at their own desks as they would normally be and in their own time zone." 

Hans Troedsson, the U.N.'s World Health Organization representative in Vietnam, described the test "as a very good initiative" to prepare for an influenza or other pandemic. 

"The risk is there, the threat is there...we need to be prepared for it and we need to be prepared in general for a pandemic," Troedsson said during a break in the conference. 

The gathering in Vietnam, the country hardest-hit by avian flu with 42 deaths out of 93 cases since late 2003, was focused on medium and long-term plans to prevent bird flu. The communist-run Southeast Asian country has been free of the disease in humans for six months thanks to a coordinated response to its epidemic, international health officials said.