14 DAY TRIAL // The US President, George W. Bush, presented a $7.1 billion plan whose purpose is to prepare the American nation for a potential bird flu pandemic.
"Every nation, every state in this union and every community in these states must be ready," Bush said.
According to AP, the president outlined that there isn't any hard evidence regarding the imminence of a bird flu pandemic in the US. He said most of those infected in Southeast Asia had become sick from infected birds and that while bird flu had spread to Europe, there were no reports of infected birds, animals or people in the US.
The states aren't too happy with White House's plan, George W. Bush announcing on Tuesday that each state will have to purchase millions of doses of an anti-flu drug with their own money to supplement the federal government's stockpile.
"They expect us to pay 75 cents on a dollar for flu medicine; that's going to be a tough pill to swallow," Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, chairman of the National Governors Association, said through a spokeswoman.
The H5N1 virus appeared in Southeast Asia at the end of 2003, and since then it has killed more than 60 people, almost half of the overall number of infections. In addition, millions of birds were killed by it in Cambodia, China, Japan and Vietnam and in other Asian countries.
The H5N1 virus has also reached Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Turkey, Croatia, Russia and Romania.