The threat of avian influenza poses serious challenges for the United States and the world, U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday during a White House press conference. Speaking at his first press conference in four months, Bush said he has been studying the 1918 influenza outbreak in order to gain a better understanding of what his "decision-making process" would be in the case of an avian flu outbreak. "I take this issue very seriously," Bush said. "The people of the country ought to rest assured that we're doing everything we can. We're watching it. We're careful. We're in communications with the world. I'm not predicting an outbreak. I'm just suggesting to you that we better be thinking about it. And we are." Bush said his government was deeply engaged in developing plans to deal with an outbreak, and that his administration has already considered certain policy implications of disaster response. In particular, Bush called upon Congress to consider the question of presidential powers-such as imposing quarantines-that would be need in the time of a major public health crisis. "The policy decisions for a president in dealing with an avian flu outbreak are difficult," the president said. "If we had an outbreak somewhere in the United States, do we not then quarantine that part of the country? And how do you then enforce a quarantine?" Bush added that he brought up the subject of avian flu in both public and private discussions with other delegates to the recent United Nations world summit in New York. He said he hoped to raise awareness of the disease's dangers among world leaders, and to ensure that health organizations like the WHO are able to rapidly assess and communicate the spread of flu between animals and humans. "We need to know on a real-time basis, as quickly as possible, the facts so that the scientific community, the world scientific community, can analyze the facts and begin to deal with it," he said. "Obviously, the best way to deal with a pandemic is to isolate it and keep it isolated in the region in which it begins." The president also emphasized the need to develop a suitable vaccine against the bird flu, and he said he was working on "encouraging the manufacturing capacity of the country and maybe the world" to help Americans feel safer.
