For more than a year now, countries in SE Asia have been battling the re-emergence of a novel strain of influenza viruses recognized by disease experts as H5N1 – and known more commonly as bird flu. Since the re-emergence of the virus in late 2003, over 140 million birds have been killed in a less than completely successful effort to contain the disease. More than 50 people are known to have died. The WHO has declared the virus to be “endemic to some parts of Asia”, and has stated that the risk of a deadly global influenza pandemic is now greater than at any time in the past several decades.

Should there be an H5N1 pandemic, the economic and business consequences are likely to be devastating for economies around the world, while the cost in human lives and suffering could well be beyond anything in living memory.

It is against this backdrop that bio-era has decided to help business leaders better understand and prepare for this possibility.

The purposes of this teleconference were to:

• Lay out the current situation regarding H5N1 in Asia
• Put the current outbreak into the broader context of infectious disease emergence
• Make a case for the economic and business impacts of the disease to date, and the relative risk exposure of different economies to disruption and loss in the event of a global influenza pandemic
• Profile areas of opportunity for companies to provide solutions that might reduce the risks of pandemic emergence, or to help mitigate the impacts.