"Prevention Is Key to Avian or Seasonal Flu"

Read the full set of Q's and A's with Susan J. Blumenthal in The Washington Post. (January 4, 2006)

Your speeches are alarming. Is that intentional?

Somewhat. If you give candid information, people make good decisions. But we also want it to be a wake-up call. People know they should eat right, exercise, get out of the way of a hurricane, but we don't always do those things. We know we shouldn't smoke, yet one out of five people do. It took Katrina and seeing some of the failures in not having state, federal and local preparedness not being coordinated to serve as a wake-up call to the concern of pandemic flu.

Are we prepared?

We're not sufficiently prepared if a pandemic were to strike us this year. We have a plan that outlines the major steps to be taken. Hopefully we'll have the time to develop new vaccines and stockpile antivirals. We don't have [the necessary] communications systems in place. We don't have a rapid diagnostic tool for using in the field, there is no cell-based vaccine nor the production systems that would be needed. . . . But we can't forget the [pandemics] that are currently with us.

Such as?

Forty million people worldwide are infected with the AIDS virus; 3 million die each year. One million children die of measles each year because they don't get a 70-cent vaccine. . . . In the United States, we have the highest infant mortality rate of the industrialized world. We spend twice as much as any other nation on health care, and we rank 18th in life expectancy and 35th in overall health status.