OFFICIALS will carry out a real-time simulation this week of an outbreak of avian influenza in poultry in Britain.
Hundreds of people will take part in Exercise Hawthorn tomorrow and Thursday, which is set three days into an outbreak.
It will be co-ordinated from the headquarters of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in London with local disease control centres in Bury St Edmunds, Leeds, Cardiff and Gloucester.
The exercise is expected to check that there are adequate contingency plans and will be followed by a report to be published in the summer.
It will include the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Environment Agency, Downing Street, the Ministry of Defence, and other Government departments.
Veterinary and farming groups are also among the dozens of organisations involved, as well as the gaming, shooting and pigeon racing sectors, plus the RSPCA, the EU, and foreign governments.
But it will not involve the military or see "people in white suits" on the streets, instead testing that systems and lines of communication are working properly.
Farm
The simulation will be headed by Dr Debby Reynolds, the Chief Veterinary Officer.
It is based on a scenario in which a highly pathogenic strain of bird flu is identified on a free range farm in Norfolk on day zero.
On day two, two highly suspect cases are reported at a turkey farm in the North of England and an egg production unit in south Wales on the border with England.
The exercise begins on day three, as preliminary results are expected from both these reported cases.
Participants are expected to perform tasks in line with plans while a handful of control teams change the scenario for them to react accordingly.
The Defra website says the simulation is set at the beginning of March "in the midst of the annual human flu cycle".
The exercise has been brought forward to April after originally being planned for the summer and follows a number of smaller exercises.
In January, the Conservatives criticised as "complacent" the Government's decision not to hold it sooner.
DO you think we are properly prepared for the threat of bird flu? Have your say.
Tweet
Comments
Login or Register to comment
They are talking about 350,000 deaths from bird 'flu and burying them in mass graves because the undertakers won't be able to keep up! I hope that I will be laying next to Cherie.
Seriously though,what kind of idiot comes up with these statistics,why not250,000 or 450,000 or 1 million? He,she or it must be a time traveller!
This news is most disturbing, surely there must be something available to counteract this virus. I actually had a search round the net and happened across a new product on the market called Byotrol. Apparently it has very positive results on combatting HN51.
One of the most eminent groups of researchers into influenza vaccines, of all persuasions, Jefferson et al has confirmed in numerous studies - the most recent a Cochrane systematic review of over 60 papers - that influenza vaccines are pretty useless. Then what of a bird flu vaccine if based on similar principles of production - not very encouraging.
Many people report suffering their first ever bout of severe flu-like illness after flu jabs despite denials by their medical representatives; then what of a bird flu jabs, will they spread a form of flu?
Statistically, it used to be said, that a person only gets flu once in a lifetime (despite the theory that the flu virus mutates annually therefore theoretically you could catch flu every year - hence you are told to take a jab to prevent that!).
With the Department of health gurus (heavily linked to the pharmaceutical bodies that make enormous amounts of monies from the public purse out of jabs industry) saying get your jabs, yet eminent scientist like Jefferson et al revealing the scientific reality that the jabs are pretty useless (and Jefferson having also recently analysed cases of human deaths from 'bird flu' and revealed that the protection from Tamiflu seems to be more myth than reality - and a number of deaths occurring despite Tamiflu use -it appears that government policy said to be designed to protect the population is largely an expensive waste of public funds being based on 1. a current H5N1 vaccine incompatible with a human H5N1 strain that may arise out of bird flu 2. a vaccine to be created from bird flu, should it transmit betwen humans, and 3. Tamiflu that at present holds little credibility for value according to experts in the field.
Is our government grasping at straws, and are those expensive potentially useless straws gonna provide more benefit to commercial cronies than to the public expected to fund them?
Why not provide everyone with 6 months worth of Vitamin C (known thanks to Linus Pauling and others for its excellent value as anti- viral) at about 5 to 10gms per day, and Vitamin A (known for its excellent antiviral properties - eg 80% less mortality in African children from measles when given instead of vaccines which are less than 30%effective) such as cod liver oil, a teaspoon a day - we Brits would have a great money saver and potentially the best anti-bird flu policy available?
Regards
John H.