Refine the flu plan.

Byline: The Register-Guard

No one wants to wait until people start dropping in the street to learn the details of the federal government's flu pandemic strategy. It made good sense for President Bush to announce his pandemic preparedness plan last week, even if some of the components were less than fully baked.

By releasing his plan with enough specifics to generate knowledgeable reaction, Bush has done state and local health departments a favor. There's still time for Congress to fill in blanks and correct misguided elements of the federal blueprint.

Oregon health officials were quick to spot holes in the president's plan with regard to sufficient funding for state and local responses. Dr. Susan Allan, Oregon's public health director, correctly pointed out the shortsightedness of pouring billions of dollars into vaccine stockpiles without adequately funding ways for local health officials to deliver the drugs.

Bush's $7.1 billion plan calls for allocating a paltry $100 million to state and local health departments to help them complete their own flu plans. But at the same time, the administration has proposed cutting $130 million this year from federal funding to those same health departments - funding that's specifically intended for preparedness planning. That doesn't make sense.

It's also illogical to expect that state governments will be equally able to afford to purchase anti-viral drugs under Bush's plan, which would force states to pay 75 percent of the cost of 31 million doses. Hurricane-battered Gulf states don't have money to spare for such expenses right now.

Dr. Sarah Hendrickson, Lane County's public health officer, said the president's presentation amounted to a "manufactured crisis," but that assessment is too harsh.

It's true, as Bush readily acknowledged in his speech, that there is no flu pandemic anywhere in the world right now. The frighteningly lethal H5N1 avian flu virus that has killed some people who were exposed to infected birds hasn't mutated to a form that can be passed from one person to another. And that scary prospect may never happen, or it may not happen for years.

But international health officials believe a flu pandemic is overdue, and failure to adequately plan a response would be a catastrophic error. In fact, other nations already have plans that are more sophisticated and better developed than the one Bush outlined last week.

Five Asian nations, including three of the countries most affected by outbreaks of avian flu, have agreed to jointly stockpile drugs and cooperate in vaccine production to prepare for a human pandemic. Such multilateral cooperation makes Bush's meager commitment of $250 million to international flu response seem woefully inadequate.

Nonetheless, a pandemic preparedness plan with White House backing is a welcome first step. With the help of state and local health officials, Congress must make appropriate adjustments. Making those adjustments now certainly beats waiting to see what the next Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown might come up with after disaster has already struck.