In response to the growing spread of A(H1N1) swine flu, which modelling based on the 1918 Spanish flu shows could kill 10,000 people in NSW alone within two months, Citizens Electoral Council leader, Craig Isherwood, today called for an emergency health care reconstruction program to prepare Australia’s health care system adequately for a deadly pandemic—for which swine flu is at the very least a dress rehearsal.

Mr Isherwood explained, “The plan must include the building of new hospitals, research, bio-defence and laboratory testing facilities, acquisition of new medical equipment such as ventilators, expansion of the number of intensive care beds, and crash programs to draw more students into the medical profession, and intensive training programs to bring them, and existing students up to speed.

“Discussion is now breaking out among many governments, most prominently France, over aspects of the physical economic mobilisation required to protect the national interest, under pandemic conditions. France has initiated an emergency plan capable of doubling the number of hospital beds. Even Mexico has ordered new ventilators and other specialised equipment which has been found to be necessary to deal with the respiratory illness brought on by this flu.

“On the other hand, in Britain, central authorities are issuing guidelines on how to make do with scarce ventilators. We cannot have that situation in Australia!”

Animal testing has revealed that this flu virus is able to replicate itself in the trachea, bronchi and bronchioles, i.e. within the lungs, rather than just in the nose and throat as the seasonal flu does. The Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) of 13^th July points out that the high rate of “cases of severe respiratory failure associated with this influenza” calls for “mechanical ventilation for these patients [which] is complex, and requires expertise and specialised equipment.”

“It is high time,” Mr Isherwood stated, “that Australia embark on programs to develop and expand our collapsing health care system—with the use of the most modern technologies and scientific advancements available.”

Mr Isherwood cited the warnings of CEC and LaRouche collaborator, Mohd Peter Davis, who was a virus researcher with the CSIRO in the 1980s, and now resides in Malaysia. Davis wrote to the New Straits Times on 12^th July, saying:

“The flu dress rehearsal reveals the tragic truth that we have completely failed to prepare worldwide defenses to combat a virulent flu pandemic. As a virus researcher 30 years ago with the Australian CSIRO, I was warning my colleagues that another 1918 type flu pandemic was inevitable, given my understanding that viruses rather than merely being the agents of disease had a hidden, more fundamental and essential role in the biosphere... but their civilisation destroying potential had to be controlled by science and technology.

“I proposed then exactly what French scientists are now advocating, namely the mass production of an effective flu vaccine and the vaccination of the entire world population within two weeks of a virulent strain emerging. However, my call for this ambitious international research program fell on deaf ears and we lost a 30 year head start.

“Now most can see the enemy approaching but we have no bullets.”

(Davis also suggested evaporatively cooled, high humidity buildings which can inactivate the influenza virus and help protect health care providers. Click here to read the full article.)

Mr Isherwood called upon the Rudd Government to finally heed Davis’ call. “The government has limited control over whether a vaccine can be produced in time, but what they can do, is act decisively to shore up our health system so it is adequately prepared. This means the garbage economic rationalist approach to health care spending must end—any government that hides behind budget constraints to justify not fixing hospitals will be responsible for killing their own people.”

Read more about the real dangers of the Swine Flu here.