The Department of Health yesterday warned there was a serious risk of avian flu breaking out in Taiwan between January and March next year, and that a US health agency had predicted 14,000 Taiwanese deaths in the event of an outbreak.
Department officials informed a meeting of the National Security Council that a simulation by the US' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted 5.3 million Taiwanese -- nearly one-quarter of the population -- would be infected by avian flu, of which 70,000 would be hospitalized and 14,000 would perish.
President Chen Shui-bian (
He made the remarks at the same National Security Council meeting convened yesterday to discuss the avian-flu threat.
"As the avian-flu virus might become capable of human-to-human transmission, which could result in a more serious impact than SARS, the government should learn lessons from the past and take effective action in advance," Chen said.
He said that the faults of the government during the SARS crisis must not be repeated.
"It would be unforgivable if the government repeated its failures. We should make thoroughgoing preparations and thoroughly implement precautionary measures," he said.
The Department of Health warned that the threat of an epidemic was very real.
"It is not a question anymore of whether it will come. It is a question of when it will hit Taiwan," Minister of Health Hou Sheng-mou (
Hou said that National Health Research Institute director Su Yi-jen (蘇益仁), who is a former director-general of the department's Center for Disease Control, reported on a recent international conference of health and disease experts that predicted an epidemic of bird flu would break out sometime between January and March.
Officials said the government thinks the potential outbreak is a matter of national security. They said the government was preparing for a potential crisis and that it was the government's job to alert the public over the potential impact of avian flu.
"The most serious problem that concerns me is that human beings do not have any immunity against bird flu. An outbreak seems to be very possible if not inevitable," Hou said.
Hou said that if the outbreak takes place, the death toll could approach that of the "Spanish flu" epidemic of 1918. He said that as many as 40 million people around the world died in that epidemic. There were only 3 million residents in Taiwan at that time, but 25,000 died from the disease that year.
"If bird flu breaks out in Taiwan, its impact on the country is expected to be around 10 times greater than that of SARS in 2003," Hou said.
According to the World Health Organization, during the SARS outbreak of 2003, 346 cases were confirmed for Taiwan, out of which 37 people died primarily because of the virus and a further 36 died of SARS-related complications.
Hou said that there were sufficient reserves of medicine and medical supplies, such as surgical masks, to treat the flu. Additional equipment and supplies were still being purchased or produced, he said.
The government intends to enforce stricter surveillance and intervention in relation to illegally imported animals and products, officials said. A stricter schedule of medical examinations will also apply for employees who have an increased risk of exposure to the flu, including farmers, public transport staff and those traveling overseas frequently.
"We will strictly monitor these people's health status and screen any potential cases that may result in the bird flu breaking out into the community," Hou said.
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