Christian MD Applauds Wisdom of Bush's Bird Flu Battle Plan
by Mary Rettig
November 2, 2005
(AgapePress) - - The executive director of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA) says the Bush administration's plan for combating the avian flu is a thorough and necessary one. This week, President George W. Bush outlined his $7 billion plan, which includes several stages of initiative. Dr. David Stevens, executive director of the CMDA, says in many ways planning to contain the spread of an illness like avian flu is not unlike planning for military action. "When you're fighting a war, you have to have a rapid response," he notes. "Then you call up your reserves, and then you increase your production and recruitment.
"You kind of respond in waves," Stevens continues, "and that's very similar to what the President has done in this war against avian flu." He says Bush's multi-phase plan involves developing faster ways to create vaccines as new strains develop and making a stockpile of anti-viral drugs to lessen flu symptoms.
The Christian physician agrees with the administration's assessment that the U.S. cannot ignore the public health threat avian flu poses to the country and possibly to the global community. He says this virus is not one to be taken lightly or underestimated.
"We've had three major pan-epidemics in this country," Stevens points out. "All three of them in the last century have come from birds, and the earliest one in 1918 actually killed over half a million people in this country and 20 million people around the world."
Although there is no bird flu pandemic in the U.S. or in the world as yet, the CMDA spokesman says Bush's plan to prepare the U.S. for the possibility of widespread human-to-human transmission of avian flu is an excellent preemptive strategy. Part of that strategy, Stevens notes, involves purchasing enough doses of the vaccine to protect 20 million of the most vulnerable Americans.
Mary Rettig, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
