US and Asian medical experts hooked up for a teleconference last week to discuss world preparedness. The US pushed their point that preparing locally will prove useless should the rest of the world not be as prepared. They intend to make sure every human and animal outbreak of avian influenza is reported, though there were few clear directives as to how a global watch on outbreaks would be put into practice.
The U.S. assistant secretary for health, Dr. John Agwunobi, tried to explain his government's "flexible response" to the pandemic with the Forest Fire Analogy.
"....the world is a large forest and a small spark occurs in a particular part of this forest.
"If we have an opportunity to aggressively throw all our resources at that spark and put out that fire, we will do so. However, if we sense that the spark has gone beyond its initial circle and is now spreading rapidly around the planet our strategy might have to change."
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