A pandemic response to a disease of predominantly seasonal intensity

What Collignon calls the “wrong and exaggerated” expert predictions1 of mortality from the recent influenza pandemic are based on the numbers that the World Health Organization advised governments to use in planning for pandemics.2 They are derived from a sensible calculation: plan for a situation considerably better than the 1918–1919 pandemic but somewhat worse than the 1957 or 1968 pandemics.

The problem in Australia is not so much the pandemic plans produced through the time-honoured process of ad-hoc, temporary federal government committees for implementation by multiple, variously organised state and territory authorities. The real problem is producing a consistent, flexible response to any developing national infectious disease emergency.

No other nation tries to do that without having a national authority, made up of full-time professionals with a fair degree of independence from the political process. The United States has its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (http://www.cdc.gov); the United Kingdom its Health Protection Agency (http://www.hpa.org.uk); and, perhaps the most pertinent example, Canada has its Public Health Agency (http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca), established in the aftermath of the SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreak. The European Union has set up a supranational European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (http://www.ecdc.europa.eu).

A plan can only ever hope to put in place all the resources needed for a response, but a flexible, consistent, science-based and targeted national response to infectious and other health emergencies requires a professional national authority.