There is not much good news on the avian flu front. Uncertainty and resulting anxiety may be causing panic even before a full blown epidemic, let alone a pandemic is in sight. It is reported that doctors are being flooded with requests for prescriptions of Tamiflu, the antiviral drug, believed by many experts to be effective against bird flu and the physicians are obliging. This has caused a shortage of the drug already. Tamiflu, which is a proven protection against other known strains of the flu virus, is now scarce and hard to procure for those affected or at risk for contracting the more common forms of flu. Roche has decided to temporarily suspend shipments of Tamiflu to the private sector in the US, in order to counter the shortage due to panic buying by healthy people.
There is one story out of Florida about a newly developed machine which if effective, may prove to be a promising step in preventing or at least reducing the prospect of global transmissions of flu and other air-borne diseases via airplane travel. Governments and airlines here and worldwide should surely check this out. Here is a short description of the common sense design.
An Orlando, Fla., company called AeroClave has developed equipment that modifies temperature and humidity inside airplanes so the air kills smallpox, SARS and bird flu. A giant white box and hose pump heated air through an airplane’s ventilation system for two hours, disinfecting parts of the plane that cleaning crews can’t reach.
Company founder Dr. Ronald Brown said the FAA is in the process of certifying the system.
“When we started this two and a half years ago, people looked at us cross-eyed,” Brown said. “SARS was just our two-minute warning. It showed how things can spread rapidly.”
As I understand it, the method is similar to autoclaving, the procedure used in disinfecting laboratory and surgical instruments. It appears that aero-claving will be possible only when the airplane is on the ground for cleaning. I hope someone will come up with an in-flight air purification method that can continuously clean and disinfect the circulating air DURING flight. An infected passenger can transmit air borne diseases (not just the flu – tuberculosis is another threat) to other passengers quite easily through the stale air circulating repeatedly for many hours. A closed, confined space, such as the cabin of a packed airplane is a perfect set up for airborne pathogens to spread, especially during long intercontinental flights.
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