WASHINGTON - A $7.1 billion White House plan to deal with a potential bird-flu pandemic drew buckshot Wednesday from lawmakers and advocates concerned that it was scant and tardy and could actually undermine global efforts to control the killer disease.

President George W. Bush announced the plan Tuesday and on Wednesday dispatched Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt and other senior officials to urge Congress to give the effort financial wings.

Under the proposal, the federal government would stockpile enough vaccine against the current strain of bird flu to protect some 20 million Americans and about $1 billion worth of anti-viral drugs that lessen the severity of flu symptoms. States would be required to establish plans to cope with a potential massive outbreak of disease, and to help pay for the vaccine and drug stockpiles.

The plan also would provide $251 million for Asian nations hit by avian flu, to help them track the disease and build new laboratories.

Leavitt, in Senate testimony, said the administration had received assurances that vaccine producer Roche AG and anti-viral maker GlaxoSmithKline could have 20 million treatment courses ready for the U.S. stockpile by the fourth quarter of 2006 and 81 million courses by the summer of 2007.

Driven by concern that the H5N1 strain of avian flu could mutate into a form that humans could easily get and transmit to one another, the White House proposal includes a key goal of building enough capacity to produce 300 million courses of flu vaccine within three months if necessary.

Already, H5N1 has infected more than 120 people and killed more than 60 in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. A global pandemic could see tens of millions of deaths, health experts have warned, adding that as things stand, a pandemic would be unstoppable because there is no known cure and drugs that can help control its spread are in woefully short supply.

As with the stockpiling effort, the Bush plan would rely on the private sector to build new production capacity. Drug companies have tended to make commitments to ramp up research, development, and production only with guarantees that they would not be held liable for problems such as unforeseen side effects and that all new production would be bought up.

Leavitt declined to detail the specific incentives the Bush administration has offered drug makers but said the plan included government support to help firms harness new technologies.

Republican and Democratic senators took aim at the proposal, as did health and consumer advocacy groups.

Senate Labor, Health and Human Services subcommittee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said public health facilities had been allowed to deteriorate badly and complained of a lack of information from the administration.

''We need to find some better way to know what the hell's going on because the executive branch won't tell us,'' Specter said.

Sen. Tom Harkin (news, bio, voting record), an Iowa Democrat, berated the requirement that states pay for drugs from the national stockpile.

''Louisiana has the money for that? And Mississippi?'' he said, referring to states devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, Harkin's Democratic colleague from New York, said federal responses to annual flu outbreaks did not bode well for the new plan.

''Since 2000, we have experienced three shortages of seasonal influenza vaccine,'' Clinton said in a statement. ''While it is welcome news that the administration is focused on vaccine research and stockpiling in the event of a pandemic flu, the question is how will the administration handle distribution and communications with a system that has failed to meet seasonal flu vaccine demands in three out of the last five years?''

Health and consumer advocates trained their heaviest fire on the plan's reliance on private industry, saying the U.S. stockpile would leave too much power in drug makers' hands and would undermine poorer countries' efforts to contain the disease and treat their populations.

''America cannot protect itself without investing in global public health,'' said Paul Zeitz, a doctor and executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance. ''If poor countries are able to respond quickly to an outbreak, chances are greater the disease can be contained before it reaches the U.S.''

Robert Weissman, a veteran investigative journalist and consumer campaigner with Washington, D.C.-based Essential Action, said the Bush plan would cost too much in terms of money and treatments denied people and countries unable to pay top dollar.

''Unless there is government authorization of generic producers, the United States will pay too much and find there is insufficient supply,'' Weissman said.

''Even more importantly, permitting Roche to maintain monopoly control over the global supply of Tamiflu [vaccine] will leave the developing countries, where an avian flu outbreak is most likely, with virtually no prospect of building up World Health Organization-recommended stockpiles.''

Those countries should issue compulsory licenses--a health emergency measure that clears the way for generic production over any objections from drug makers--and the U.S. should ''give its blessing,'' Weissman added.

Roche, the maker of the Tamiflu vaccine also known as oseltamivir, has offered voluntary licenses to other companies, according to Brook Baker, an expert on international patent law at U.S.-based advocacy group Health GAP.

But the offer remains ''ill-defined,'' Baker said, ''leaving unclear how the drug will be affordable to people in developing countries.

''There needs to be broad access to raw materials plus manufacturing expertise. In addition, the U.S. and other nations at risk should suspend or override patent rights to access necessary supplies of oseltamivir for emergency public health stockpiles,'' Baker added.

Bird flu has spread as a result of chickens mixing with domesticated and wild waterfowl that carry the virus, which is found in the birds' sputum and excreta. Humans can be infected when handling--and especially slaughtering--the birds, but the flu does not appear to be transmitted through cooked meat or eggs.

Copyright © 2005 OneWorld.net.

###