Avian Influenza: Breaking News and Public Health and Surveillance Readiness

Speakers described how the 1918 influenza pandemic may indicate the profile of a twenty-first century global influenza pandemic in severity and impact, as well as the adequacy of U.S. and global public health infrastructure and surveillance systems.

Speakers were: Nancy J. Cox, director of both the CDC’s Influenza Division and the WHO’s Collaboration Center for Surveillance, Epidemiology and Control of Influenza; Robert A. Lamb, an HHMI investigator and the John Evans Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Northwestern University, and professor of microbiology-immunology at Northwestern University Medical School; Matthew Lorence, associate director, emerging markets, Affymetrix Inc.; Farzad Mostashari, assistant commissioner for the Bureau of Epidemiology Services, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene; David Nabarro, senior coordinator for the United Nations System for Influenza Coordination; Jeffery K. Taubenberger, chair, Department of Molecular Pathology, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
This event is the first in a series of sessions examining the current state of the global avian influenza threat and US and international vulnerability to this and other infectious diseases. Subsequent sessions will follow.