In order to understand the potential threat presented by the avian flu , it is first important to understand how the virus spreads among birds and may spread among people. The avian flu, also known by its subtype H5N1, is endemic in birds in Southeast Asia with isolated cases appearing in Azerbaijan , Turkey , Egypt , and Iraq .
An overwhelming majority of H5N1 cases in humans resulted from daily contact with infected poultry. There have only been an estimated 180 cases reported since 1997. Many of these cases were reported in Southeast Asia where it is not uncommon for humans to live in close proximity to domesticated poultry. Experts believe that the virus is hard to spread among humans because the virus infects cells deep in the lungs, not via sneezing and coughing, both of which could spread a virus resident in the upper respiratory system and nasal passage. While the H5N1 virus rarely spreads to and among humans, experts fear that the virus could mutate and spread rapidly to humans via person-to-person contact. In one possible scenario, a bovine-borne influenza virus could mutate and combine with the avian flu to form a virus that could easily spread among humans.
The impact of an avian flu pandemic would be two fold. The first and most obvious consequence is the human toll measured in terms of death and sickness. The worst-case scenario for a human pandemic projects that as many as 150 million humans could die from the virus?roughly 2-3% percent of the world?s population. This worst-case scenario is derived from extrapolating the number of deaths caused by the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic that killed 50 million people, roughly 2.5% of the world?s population at that time. It is difficult to say with certainty that a 21st Century avian flu would have the same mortality rate as the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. For example, the modern health care system is more sophisticated and has a better surveillance infrastructure in place that may help detect outbreaks of a virus earlier, thus saving lives. However, it is also true that today?s integrated global economy facilitates a free flow of people and goods; therefore, it is possible that an outbreak of avian flu could accelerate into a pandemic at a breakneck pace.
Another consequence of a pandemic is the cost associated with the public and private efforts to prevent the spread of the virus. For example, according to the World Bank, Vietnam destroyed some 44 million birds, or 17 percent of the total poultry population, in response to an outbreak of avian flu. The destruction of the poultry cost approximately $120 million, which equated to 0.3% of Vietnam?s GDP. Moreover, should private citizens decide not to travel to an affected country, the impact on the tourist economy could also have a significant impact on a country?s GDP.
To understand the potential economic effect of a pandemic, it is useful to examine the SARS outbreak , which killed approximately 800 people worldwide. While the outbreak itself did not drastically impact any single economy, the public?s response to the SARS outbreak had a more severe impact on GDP. People responded to SARS by limiting contact with other people and in effect created a self-enforced quarantine. The public?s response resulted in a sharply reduced demand for certain sectors such as tourism, mass transportation, and retail. Moreover, business suffered from increased absenteeism and the increased cost of production as they were forced to alter processes to adapt to disruptions in labor and supply chain. As a result, according to the World Bank, ?economic losses were estimated at 0.5 percent of annual East Asian GDP in 2003, concentrated in the second quarter of the year, when there was a much sharper loss of around 2 percent of quarterly GDP.? The World Bank goes on to extrapolate a 2 percent loss of global GDP during an avian flu pandemic at a cost to the world economy of $800 billion.
Therefore, national governments and the business community should take the threat of avian flu seriously due to the virus’s potential for widespread death and economic dislocation.
