According to public health experts, the risk of a deadly global influenza pandemic is greater than at any time in the past several decades. The strain of avian influenza that has become widespread among birds in Asia over the past eighteen months, known as H5N1, now poses “the gravest possible threat of a global pandemic,” according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Recent H5N1 outbreaks in wild bird populations in northern China indicate that the virus, which is becoming highly pathogenic in more and more species, remains unstable, unpredictable, and highly versatile.

A pandemic could infect 20–30% of the world’s human population, killing millions of people within months. The 1918 pandemic, which quickly spread around the world in the era before commercial air travel, killed 20–40 million people out of a population of 1.8 billion. With today’s world population of 6.4 billion—closely linked by global trade and travel—a pandemic could move through the population quickly, potentially causing serious damage to economies in Asia and elsewhere around the world.

The scope and severity of possible disruptions to social and economic systems resulting from a pandemic pose a great challenge for business continuity planners, who must consider a wide range of possible outcomes, develop strategies to respond to events on a global scale, and prepare for the possibility of disruptions across many different parts of society and the economy. Nonetheless, the degree of preparedness achieved by different companies may determine how they will fare in the event of a fast-moving global pandemic.