Intelligence

GTA firms join forces to fight flu pandemic

TheStar.com - GTA firms join forces to fight flu pandemic

Business leaders form advisory group
Examine methods for vaccine delivery

TYLER HAMILTON
BUSINESS REPORTER

Toronto's public health authority is setting up an advisory group of GTA business leaders this fall to explore ways of keeping the city's economic engine running in the event of a future flu pandemic, the Toronto Star has learned.

Meetings have already been held with key business leaders over the past few months, including those from the financial sector, and several large organizations are part of a pilot project to test a method for distributing vaccines to high-priority groups within large companies, such as providers of gas, hydro, and public transportation.

"There's an increase of interest from the business community," said Geri Nephew, lead manager for pandemic and influenza planning with Toronto Public Health. "We're helping them identify their risk with respect to pandemic influenza and what might be the impact on their business."

The impact could be huge.

Sherry Cooper, chief economist of BMO Nesbitt Burns, is predicting that, if a strain of the avian H5N1 virus that's spreading throughout Asia and eastern Russia in birds mutates to allow easy human-to-human transmission, the effect on the global economy would likely be "devastating."

Borders would close. Inventories would decline. Workforces would be crippled. Markets would plunge.

"Any disruption of the free movement of goods, services and people would undoubtedly spin into a decline in economy activity," Cooper said, adding the result would be negative growth of gross domestic product in most major regions of the world.

She said an executive committee and the board of Bank of Montreal have been busy working on emergency response plans in the event of pandemic-like events. "It's also my understanding that the other banks are doing this as well."

Toronto Public Health has been working on a pandemic influenza plan for the city since December 2002. It was put on hold in 2003 during the SARS crisis, but resumed in January 2004. The agency anticipates a final draft of the plan will be completed in October.

According to a recent staff report, "businesses in Toronto will be significantly affected by employee illness and absenteeism, changes in supply (and) demand of products and services, decreased travel within the city, and societal disruption."

Nephew said the working assumption is that 35 per cent of the population will fall sick in the event of a pandemic, but the impact on the workforce could be much worse because, "if there is a sick family member or sick child in the home, one of the parents is going to have to stay home. That's a reality businesses will need to think about."

What's clear is that some industry leaders haven't been thinking about it.

"This really hasn't been talked about at all. It just hasn't been on the radar screen," said Buzz Hargrove, head of the Canadian Auto Workers, the country's largest private-sector union. A pandemic would not only cause a major disruption in the assembly lines of Canada's auto manufacturing plants, it also could tighten borders and make it impossible to get the parts needed to assemble vehicles.

Companies that rely on just-in-time delivery of inventory would be hit hardest, said Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist for BMO Financial Group.

He used the example of computer manufacturers that assemble products largely from parts out of Asia, such as Dell Inc. "What you'd have for that industry would be chaos completely let loose."

Sensing a need for better education and awareness in the business community, Philadelphia-based medical consultancy International SOS, which has an office in Toronto, launched a service this month that helps corporations plan for pandemics.

Its customer base is a who's who of corporate Canada, including telecommunications giant Nortel Networks Corp., and so far a handful of Canadian companies have already signed up for its pandemic planning services.

Dr. Myles Druckman, vice-president of medical assistance for International SOS, said that, as governments worldwide put programs in place and begin stockpiling antiviral drugs to slow the spread of outbreaks, most businesses are just waking up to the issue.

"We're in the infancy stages," said Toronto-born Druckman. "Most companies are still getting their hands around this."

He said companies with exposure in current avian flu hotspots — such as China and South Korea — have shown most interest, largely because of fears about how an outbreak would affect their global supply chain. But companies doing significant business in Asia and relying on frequent travel to the region are also growing concerned.

Brampton-based Nortel, for instance, has cited China, India, South Korean and other Asia countries as high-growth markets and is significantly building up its presence in the region.

Nortel spokesperson Joanne Latham said the company has had a comprehensive business continuity plan in place since the SARS outbreak. She said the company, like many others, would likely resort to video and teleconferencing technologies to conduct "virtual meetings" and training sessions for customers, to cut down on travel and reduce person-to-person contact in the workplace.

"We would rely on that pretty heavily if a travel ban were to come into play," said Latham.

Druckman said planning measures could include the creation of basic workplace hygiene and infection-control policies to the development of "corpse management" guidelines for human resources departments, which would have to respond to and report potentially large death rates among employees.

SOS International has gone so far as to advise some companies — among them Coca Cola, Motorola and Exxon Mobil — to stockpile antivirus drugs such as Tamiflu, which the World Health Organization and dozens of national governments have begun to accumulate.

"Some organizations are doing this. Some are considering it. Others are not considering it," said Druckman. He would not say if any Canadian firms have engaged in the strategy.

Canada has about 22.5 million Tamiflu pills stockpiled, enough to treat roughly 8 per cent of the population.

Corporate stockpiling of Tamiflu, if the practice were to emerge, would likely call into question whether corporate interests and dollars are undermining government efforts to protect the general public.

Already, consumers are beginning to stockpile the antivirus drug, with Canadian and U.S. Tamiflu sales jumping more than three-fold in the past year.

Nephew at Toronto Public Health said there is nothing to stop Canadian firms from stockpiling drugs such as Tamiflu and no policies to encourage or to discourage the practice. "It would be their decisions."

Additional articles by Tyler Hamilton

August 25, 2005 at 08:11 AM in Flu pandemic watch | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home