Bush planning for avian flu pandemic

WASHINGTON — President Bush said Tuesday that he is working on plans to deal with a possible outbreak of avian flu, including use of the military to quarantine regions of the country that may become infected.

"I'm not predicting an outbreak," Bush said during a news Conference in the Rose Garden of the White House. "I'm just suggesting to you that we better be thinking about it. And we are. And we're more than thinking about it; we're trying to put plans in place."

Bird flu has killed at least 60 people in Asia, and authorities in Asia and Europe have slaughtered millions of possibly infected birds.

So far, all known instances of human death from avian flu resulted from direct infection from birds. Scientists and government officials alike worry about what would happen if the flu mutates into a form that could jump the species barrier and spread from person to person.

Dr. David Nabarro, the new U.N. coordinator for avian and human influenza, said in a phone interview that governments and health agencies around the world are predicting that if the bird flu mutates, between five million and 150 million people could become infected and die.

At the news conference, Bush told reporters that "the policy decisions for a president in dealing with an avian flu outbreak are difficult."

The best way to deal with a pandemic is "isolate it and keep it isolated in the region in which it begins," Bush said.

Bush himself pinpointed some possible problems with quarantine, including how it would be enforced and who would enforce it.

"One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move, so that's why I put it on the table."

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt acknowledged in an interview that the United States was not prepared for a pandemic flu outbreak. He plans to spend next week touring Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, the countries most likely to be the source of an avian flu outbreak, and talking with health ministers there about a coordinated surveillance of outbreaks.

"No one in the world is ready for it," Leavitt said. "But we're more ready today than we were yesterday. And we'll be more prepared tomorrow than we are today."

Bush said he is reading up on avian flu, including John Barry's book "The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History," about the 1918 outbreak of "Spanish Flu" that killed an estimated 40 million people worldwide. Bush also said it is important for Congress to debate the issue.