SHADOW Health Minister Louise Jackson has accused the Government of failing to take the threat of a bird flu outbreak seriously.

She said that former Opposition Leader Grant Gibbons highlighted the need for a plan in a letter to Health Minister Patrice Minors seven months ago, but the Minister had failed to address the issue.

"Everybody else in the world seems to be taking the threat seriously, but not Bermuda," Mrs. Jackson said.

"Minister Minors said on March 16 that she would roll out a public awareness campaign within a couple of weeks. Since then there's been nothing. People don't know what's going on.

"We need a plan and the Government hasn't got one."

A strain of bird flu known as H5N1 has killed millions of chickens and more than 100 people world-wide since 2003, mostly in Asia. While the deaths are blamed on close contact with sick poultry, experts are afraid the virus could mutate to spread easily among people. Some scientists say it is a matter of when rather than if that happens.

Governments around the world have been stockpiling vaccine in preparation for that nightmare scenario, while businesses have assigned staff to prepare detailed plans for how they will operate when a high percentage of staff are off sick.

For example, the US Government has ordered around 20 million courses of the Tamiflu vaccine and has announced a six-stage plan of action.

Stage two would come when a human-to-human infection is confirmed overseas. This would activate a plan to test all visitors to the US for the disease, spark travel restrictions to and from infected areas and set up quarantine stations.

Should the disease infiltrate the US, there are plans in place to distribute from the vaccine stockpile, restrict non-essential passenger traffic from infected areas and allow for federal intervention to maintain critical infrastructure and services.

Yesterday the US Government awarded more than $1 billion to five drug manufacturers that are developing technology for speedier mass production of vaccines in case of a flu pandemic.

The World Bank is seeking $1.5 billion towards efforts to stop bird flu's spread.

In contrast, the Bermuda Government has failed to address the issue at all, according to Mrs. Jackson.

"There are so many questions unanswered," Mrs Jackson said. "If people get bird flu, where will they be treated. We have a busy hospital, do we have any beds for flu victims?

"Will we have travel restrictions if human-to-human transmission occurs somewhere else in the world?

"The US is saying that 40 per cent of people could be off work in the event of a pandemic. Even if ten or 15 per cent of Bermuda's workforce couldn't work, how would we cope? If everybody in the banks gets sick, what happens to our money?"

Mrs. Jackson said Ms Minors had responded to Dr. Gibbons' letter by inviting the two Opposition MPs to view a presentation on bird flu by the Health Promotion Department. However, a date for the presentation had not been forthcoming despite Mrs. Jackson's repeated calls to Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Cann.

In his letter of last November, Dr. Gibbons had suggested a complete cull of the island's feral chicken population, as a measure to protect against the threat of bird flu.

Since then, a chicken cull has been started by the Environment Ministry, rather than the Health Ministry.