Politics could slow down bird flu response

Sulfikar Amir New York

After weeks of delay, President George Bush finally announced his plan of action for the bird flu threat. Speaking at the National Institute of Health (NIH), Bush urged the U.S. Congress to let him use US$7.1 billion of the federal budget. The largest proportion of this money would go to accelerating cell-culture technology ($2.8 billion) followed by vaccine provision ($1.5 billion) and stockpiling of antiviral drugs, specifically Tamiflu and Relenza ($1 billion). With this huge amount of spending, Bush wants to assure the public that there will be enough of the antiviral drugs for every American in case an outbreak occurs.

Along with that, Bush also formed the National Bio- surveillance Initiative and launched a website entitled pandemicflu.gov from which American citizens could retrieve any information regarding bird flu disease and how to stop its spread. As Bush stated, the goal of the plans is to give Americans peace of mind knowing that their government is ready to respond to an influenza pandemic.

Bush's plans seem solid. But there is more politics surrounding the plans than first appears. Here the timing tells us something, linking the plans to Bush's declining popularity. According to a poll by NBC and the Wall Street Journal last month, only 39 percent of American people still want the Republicans in power.

The strife between the Republicans and the Democrats adds more political tension to the bird flu issue. A week before Bush rolled out his plans, Democrats sponsored legislation that called for $8 billion to respond to the bird flu pandemic. Though sharing concern over the worst possible impacts of bird flu, both parties are split in their focus. Democrats think that the Bush administration moves too slow and its strategy is misleading. They criticize Bush's policy of allowing a few pharmaceutical companies to hold the drug patents.

The monopoly policy sparks cynicism for only two big pharmaceutical firms benefit the most from Bush's bird flu plans. One of them is Gilead holding a million-dollar contract from the government to produce Tamiflu. Intriguingly, a large proportion of Gilead shares belong to secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld who served as Gilead research chairman before joining the Bush administration in 2001.

A variety of hidden interests plaguing Bush's bird flu plans shows that the bird flu issue in America is not a matter of public health policy per se but one that involves complicated political dimensions. The lesson is that if the politics of bird flu is poorly handled, it could become a serious obstacle in responding to the problem.

Despite all the problems, the U.S. government has concrete action plans to curb a possible bird flu pandemic.

The situation is somewhat different in Indonesia, which has the highest incidence of bird flu in poultry after China.

Lack of infrastructure and poor coordination among government agencies are hindrances to any effort to prepare for a bird flu outbreak. But more disturbing is that Indonesian politics could become a bottleneck to initiatives to combat bird flu. The current political constellation makes it doubtful Indonesia would be able to come up with a plan in case of a bird flu pandemic.

The political obstacles appear both in the executive and the legislative. The former results from the fact that the United Indonesia Cabinet is a product of political negotiations among a few political parties. The competition among the parties in the Cabinet could obstruct interdepartmental coordination which is essential to the handling of bird flu issues.

This is really discouraging because the response strategy could only work with collaboration between the executive and legislative bodies. Different political interests in those institutions could slow down the government's response toward the imminent threat of a bird flu pandemic.

In order to overcome the political obstacles, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono must get directly involved by leading a national bird flu response initiative.

This must be undertaken before the threat of a bird flu pandemic becomes a reality taking many lives and threatening national health security.

The writer is an adjunct professor at the Dept. of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.