Bird flu exercise plan

BIO-SECURITY and animal health experts are preparing for a bird flu pandemic to sweep the south-west later this month albeit as a massive mock exercise.

Exercise Eleusis is a Federal Government initiative aimed at testing the country's preparedness for a possible outbreak of H5N1 avian influenza.

The disease has killed 60 people in Asia since 2003.

The exercise will start on November 29, day five of a theoretical outbreak at Murray Bridge in South Australia.

It will conclude on December 1. The Standard understands the exercise will simulate bird flu sweeping right through the south-west to the Mornington Peninsula before heading north towards Sydney.


While Exercise Eleusis is classified as ``desktop'' and has no field component, the mock-up will involve theoretical actions such as road closures and other containment measures.

Hundreds of players in Victoria alone, including Department of Primary Industries, Warrnambool bio-security and emergencies manager Michael Boyd, will respond.

``Several other people from other animal health fields across the south-west will be involved, people with primary roles in emergency management,'' he said.

``My primary role will be looking at how the overall response works in terms of the coordination between DPI and other agencies.''

Mr Boyd will be based at an emergency control centre in Melbourne with representatives from other government departments and the animal and health industries.

Federal Government spokesman Howard Conkey said the critical objective was to test how the agricultural industry integrated its response with the health industry. ``Both have clear ideas as to how to respond if the disease occurred in Australia,'' he said.

``The test is to see how well we integrate those responses ... Major players will have to investigate how it got to Australia, how to contain it and deal with ... food safety and all manner of things.

``The other objective is public communications because if something like this occurred the demand from the media, public and stakeholders like the poultry industry ... would be astronomical.
``This has been two years in the making.''

source: the standard