Listen to global public health experts discuss the threat of an avian flu pandemic and steps that can and should be taken to address it.

Watch global public health experts discuss the threat of an avian flu pandemic and steps that can and should be taken to address it.

Bruce Gellin and Michael Osterholm, with his recent article in Foreign Affairs article, “Unprepared for a Pandemic”, discuss the current state of pandemic influenza given the recent human deaths in Egypt how the virus has reemerged in birds in Asia . 

This study tested the association of multiple interventions with reduced disease transmission during the 1918 epidemic.

Listen to Michael T. Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, and author of the recent Foreign Affairs article, "Unprepared for a Pandemic", discuss the current threat of the pandemic flu as part of CFR's State and Local Officials Conference Call Series.

Learn more about CFR's State and Local Officials Initiative.

The RAND Corporation examines past attempts to rebuild public health and health care delivery systems during nation-building efforts after U.S. military deployments (PDF).

A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services document providing guidance in the event of an outbreak of pandemic influenza.

The need to prepare for an influenza pandemic has not yet sunk in, partly because disaster has not yet struck. But that good news could turn into very bad news if it leads to slacking off on necessary preparations today: although no one can predict when or how, a pandemic will occur for sure, and it will have implications far beyond its toll on human health.

As avian flu continues its global—and westward—spread, experts say the world remains unprepared for a possible pandemic.

A discussion of Garrett’s newest Foreign Affairs article:

A flood of public and private money has started to flow to the developing world, funding a vast array of efforts to combat AIDS, TB, malaria, and other killer diseases. Unfortunately, writes Garrett, much of that “is leaking away without result,” doing little to improve basic public health on the ground.

The disease burden of a population, and how that burden is distributed, are important pieces of information for prioritizing and defining strategies to protect population health. To help provide a reliable source of information for policy-makers, WHO has developed methods to analyse the impacts of risks for health, and has estimated the impacts of 26 risk factors worldwide, including climate change

With the Democrats in control of Congress, another White House policy is up for reexamination: the Bush administration’s pro-abstinence approach to the global AIDS pandemic.

Two economists, Steven Radelet of the Center for Global Development and William Easterly of New York University, debate the effectiveness of foreign aid.

A new paper in the New England Journal of Medicine looks at the evolution and spread of the H5N1 (avian flu) virus.

Laurie Garrett, CFR senior fellow for global health, says the world is in a better position to handle a potential avian flu pandemic than it was two years ago. But she warns that we still don't have "a toolkit that can stop this virus from circulating" if it evolves to allow easy human-to-human transmission.