National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza

This document is the first year follow up to the release of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan. The US pandemic preparedness and response goals are: (1) stopping, slowing, or otherwise limiting the spread of a pandemic to the United States; (2) limiting the domestic spread of a pandemic and mitigating disease, suffering, and death; and (3) sustaining infrastructure and mitigating impact to the economy and the functioning of society.


As stated here, the strategy of the US through the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza is to contain H5N1 poultry outbreaks (bird flu - AI) and rapidly identify associated cases of human disease at its source by improving laboratory diagnosis and early warning networks in more than 75 countries and working with its partners to expand on-the-ground surveillance capacity, enhance national and regional laboratories, and improve knowledge about the movement and changes in H5N1 on a global scale to ensure that countries are able to quickly confirm outbreaks in animals or people.

In preparation for a possible pandemic, the US has developed protocols and trained personnel to support an international effort to contain the pandemic in its earliest stages, including procuring and pre-positioning overseas stockpiles of personal protective equipment, decontamination kits, and antiviral medications in quantities sufficient to treat 50 million people, to complement global efforts to contain pandemic outbreaks. It also has done strategic border planning to slow entry of the pandemic if it occurs outside its borders.

Should the pandemic reach the US, the national government is enhancing its ability to detect and respond early through resources provided to state and local health departments, increasing the number of sentinel providers, and improving laboratory detection at public health laboratories. The U.S. Laboratory Response Network (LRN), which includes state public health laboratories, is prepared to conduct initial testing of suspected human infection with H5N1 within 24 hours of receipt. Work is being done with industry partners to develop rapid diagnostic tests to quickly discriminate pandemic influenza from seasonal influenza or other illnesses.

In addition, according to this document, ongoing pharmaceutical work includes expansion of vaccine manufacturing capacity, the advanced development of new cell-based vaccines, antigen-sparing technologies to stretch the vaccine supply, and the establishment and maintenance of pre-pandemic vaccine stockpiles, as well as antiviral drugs. The US government is also investing in the development of new antiviral drugs.

In February 2007, the national government released guidance for social mitigation of the virus including social distancing strategies that proved effective in the 1918 pandemic in the US. Hospital and drug and vaccine distribution networks are under expansion. Work continues on interdepartmental connectivity and collaboration, as well as engaging community planning efforts coordinating the many providers and organizations involved. The government also works with non-federal stakeholders to address practical implementation considerations, including legal and feasibility concerns, at the state, local, and tribal levels to minimise any adverse consequences associated with implementation.

Future work on real-time disease surveillance, hospital capacity expansion, local agency and organisation coordination, application of community adherence to mitigation measures, and instruction in healthy behavioural practices on the individual level is still needed, according to this report.

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