PREPAREDNESS FOR BUSINESSES AND HOMES
RISK ASSESSMENT
9.1 Know your exposure. One of the first tasks any business should complete before launching into business continuity preparations for the bird flu threat is a risk assessment. You need to assess the risks to your business. Some businesses will suffer more than others. Some are more or less exposed in some areas than others.
9.2 There is little point in spending money, management time and other resources in an area which would have little operational effect during a disruption. Conversely you do not want an area where there is high exposure to not have a contingency plan in place.
9.3 It is worthy of note that during SARS, The Hong Kong Trade Development Council reported that 65% of businesses suffered to some extent in their bottom line, many of those went under. 33% managed to survive unscathed and an incredible 2% of businesses actually saw an improvement. So how come they were ready to take up the slack? It was because they had some sort of plan in place, even if it wasn't designed for something like SARS.
9.4 A business which has assessed risk, and which has a contingency plan in place for each of those risks, will be better positioned to capitalise on the opportunities that something like Bird Flu will bring. Many competitors will stumble, and the opportunity will present itself for those with a plan to take up the slack and ultimately increase their bottom line.
9.5 Make sure your business is one of those that is ready, rather than one of those which will stumble, and lose customers as soon a disruption occurs.
9.6 birdflu-manual.com have prepared a simple Risk Assessment template which you should download and print out. It will allow you to assess your Company's current risk exposure, and which areas of your operations are in need of a fall back or contingency plan.
9.7 Whilst it is arguable that this Risk Assessment is over simplified, it is designed to be completed internally without the resources, costs and know-how that would normally be required, to perform the type of Risk Assessment offered by professional consulting firms.
9.8 Should you find that you need to conduct such an in-depth Risk Assessment you can either employee a professional consulting firm or try one of the many Risk Assessment Software products available on the market.
9.9 The Risk Analysis provided covers the four principal areas which all businesses are reliant, namely:
9.9.1 What are your critical processes
9.9.2 Who are your critical people
9.9.3 Which are your critical suppliers
9.9.4 What utilities do you rely on
9.10 Look at how you are currently assessing your risk, if at all. How you are assessing which of these is most to least exposed, and know which low impact failures if combined would result in high impact disruption.
Analyse your exposure
See also
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| 05/15/2008 04:00 PM |
| Detection Of Mortality Clusters Associated With Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza In Poultry: A Theoretical Analysis |
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Rapid detection of infectious disease outbreaks is often crucial for their effective control. One example is highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) such as H5N1 in commercial poultry flocks. There is no quantitative data, however, on how quickly the effects of HPAI infection in poultry flocks can be detected. Here, we study, using an individual-based mathematical model, time to detection in chicken flocks.
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| 05/05/2008 07:00 PM |
| Learning From The Influenza Virus' Tricks |
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Influenza is currently a grave concern for governments and health organisations around the world. The worry is the potential for highly virulent bird flu strains, such as H5N1, to develop the ability to infect humans easily. New drugs and vaccines to halt the spread of the virus are badly needed.
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| 04/26/2008 01:00 AM |
| Indonesia Runs Large Scale Bird Flu Drill |
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Indonesia is running a large scale drill simulating an outbreak of human to human bird flu that involves thousands of villagers, health workers and government officials, rehearsing for a potential pandemic. The drill started today, Friday 25th April, and is scheduled to run for three days.
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| 04/25/2008 04:00 PM |
| Heading Off A Bird-Flu Pandemic: We Need Broadly Protective Vaccines That Can Be Rapidly Produced And Administered |
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Widespread vaccination likely will be the cornerstone of public-health measures for controlling an H5N1 bird-flu pandemic, say Andrea Gambotto, M.D., assistant professor of surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and his colleagues, in this week's edition of The Lancet. However, any vaccines must be broadly protective and rapidly producible to be effective against H5N1, which is devastating in humans, the authors write in a journal Seminar.
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| 04/18/2008 08:00 PM |
| Identification Of The Common Mechanism Underlying Acute Respiratory Disease Syndrome May Lead To New Strategies Against Bird Flu |
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The Spanish flu outbreak of 1918 killed between 30 and 50 million people. In the infected patients, the ultimate cause of death was acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). This fatal condition is a massive reaction of the body during which the lung becomes severely damaged. ARDS can be induced by various bacterial and viral infections, but also by chemical agents. These could be toxic gases that are inhaled or gastric acid when aspirated.
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| 04/18/2008 06:00 PM |
| New Vaccine May Give Long-term Defense Against Deadly Bird Flu And Its Variant Forms |
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A new vaccine under development may provide protection against highly pathogenic bird flu and its evolving forms, according to researchers at Purdue University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who discovered the new preventative drug and have tested it in mice.
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