BMJ  2006;332:913 (15 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7546.913

Letter

Bird flu

Pandemic flu preparation: an unheeded lesson from SARS

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Current global battle plans against pandemic flu discussed by Pickles seem to ignore one clear lesson of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS): that international air travel is the one feature that most differentiates current transmission scenarios from those in 1918.¹ The new coronavirus arrived in Hong Kong from China on a jet plane and, from that efficient air hub, quickly spread to Vietnam, Singapore, and Canada, eventually engulfing 27 countries around the globe.

One thing is certain: if and when sustained human to human transmission of H5N1 becomes reality, the world will no longer be dealing with sporadic avian flu, borne along migratory flight paths of birds,² but aviation flu—winged at subsonic speed along commercial air conduits to every corner of planet Earth.

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I hope that appropriate preventive measures are being put into place by the airlines and airports of the world, but that may be just . . . [Full text of this article]

Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597 coflimmk@nus.edu.sg

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This article has been cited by other articles:

• Nolte, E., Ettelt, S., Thomson, S., Mays, N. (2008). Learning from other countries: an on-call facility for health care policy. J Health Serv Res Policy 13: 58-64 [Abstract] [Full text]  

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