Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services said they had taken steps to protect public health resources like stockpiles of drugs and vaccines.
One of the by products of this success is tusks from dead elephants, or elephants culled because they threatened tourists or "flattened locals," but ivory bans require that this resource be stockpiled.
Therefore, it is not feasible for low-income countries to allocate scarce resources to stockpile sufficient quantities of oseltamivir for an unpredictable influenza pandemic.
Not surprisingly, developing countries themselves "will not allocate scarce resources to stockpile significant quantities of oseltamivir for an unpredictable influenza pandemic" (1 ).
"The poor did not have the resources to stockpile food or fuel for heating and the supplies in the now inaccessible village as a whole are stretched", said Rana Flowers, the Resident Coordinator a.i. in Mongolia.
Recalcitrant resource: The plutonium stockpiled here, at the Sellafield nuclear complex in the UK, could fuel next-generation nuclear power.
Unequal distribution of resources, including antiviral stockpiles, could also be a major international issue when an influenza pandemic occurs.
However, supplies of neuraminidase inhibitors are limited, and countries may not have the financial resources to purchase large stockpiles.
To mitigate the effects of a worldwide pandemic that might lead to extremely large numbers of patients requiring intensive medical care would require actions and preparations such as expanding ICU capacity, developing management systems to control resources, and ensuring adequate stockpiles of ventilators, medications, equipment, and supplies [ 49].
Despite a WHO press release in 2009, advising countries to phase out stavudine usage (http://www.who.int/ mediacentre/news/releases/2009/world_aids_20091130/en/index.html), observations in Africa in 2013 indicate that the usage of this drug continues due to the large stockpiles in resource-constrained treatment centers.
Among other things, he said, the government should work to educate the population about disaster preparedness, retrofit buildings with seismic-shock absorbers, stockpile resources, and use city planning to steer people away from vulnerable areas.
