Just over two weeks ago, this newspaper reported on a workshop held by the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) in association with the Caribbean Poultry Association and the ministries of health and agriculture to train people to identify and handle the highly pathogenic avian influenza or bird flu.

The health ministry and the government, we were told at the workshop, had high on their agenda the impending threat of the disease and the potential it holds for triggering a human pandemic.

In fact, the health minister, Mr Horace Dalley, went further. He told the conference that a National Animal Emergency Committee was set up by the government to concentrate on efforts needed to face an outbreak of bird flu and its potential threat to animals.

He also spoke of the $13.5 million approved by the Cabinet, on the recommendation of a task force, to strengthen surveillance and laboratory capacity within the Veterinary Services Division of the Ministry of Agriculture.

An Animal Disease Emergency Preparedness Plan and a surveillance programme for farm poultry, migratory birds and shore birds have also been activated, Minister Dalley reported.

The health authorities, we believe, are to be congratulated for taking these preventative steps and for staging this workshop, which was also aimed at providing relevant information to the public by improving risk communication skills among stakeholders; helping in planning preparedness strategies in anticipation of crises; and providing the tools for monitoring stakeholder concerns.

The importance of easily available information and its comprehensive dissemination to the public, almost to the point of saturation, cannot be over-emphasized in relation to this disease.

For, as we have already heard from Dr Lee Jong-wook, the World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general, only about 50 countries have concrete plans to effectively deal with this highly pathogenic H5N1 virus, and the others are either scrambling to have a plan or have plans that are inadequate.

The WHO has also reminded us that a fully transmissible human pandemic virus normally takes three months to spread worldwide after it first appears. It is highly likely, therefore, that every country will be affected.

Tourism as we now know it, will come to a standstill. Economies will take a nosedive, and even more crucial will be the monumental cost in human lives.

We raise this issue again because of the deficiency in Jamaica's public hospital system highlighted last week by PAHO official Dr Ernest Pate at a seminar in Kingston.

According to Dr Pate, the 3,800 manned beds in our hospitals islandwide would not be enough to accommodate the number of persons who would become affected by the mildest form of a pandemic.

Dr Pate estimates that there would be approximately 6,500 hospitalisations and about 1,200 deaths. The problem, he added, could worsen, given that only 19 of the island's 27 intensive care unit (ICU) beds are equipped with trained staff.

His notification that in the event of a pandemic we would need 68 ICU beds in the first week, 175 in the second week and 437 by the third week gives an indication of how under-prepared we are for the possibility of this deadly human strain of the bird flu virus.

We hope that the health authorities have taken all this into account and are in the process of addressing this problem. For even if the world is spared the ravages of this human pandemic, our having more ICU beds will help to enhance our health services.

As well, the workshop held earlier this month at which Minister Dalley spoke, should not be the sole forum for educating the public about this disease.

The government needs to utilise all its communications resources to get the information out to every community in Jamaica. We admit that it is not an easy task. But running a country is a tough job. And those who offered themselves to do so should know full well that they have a responsibility to the people who put them there.

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