International Bird Flu Summit in Washington DC, February 2006

Companies offer wares to guard against spread of bird flu

Friendship Industries has launched into PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) Kitting and is part of the global emergency prep for the Avian Influenza (aka Bird Flu or AI) Pandemic. Luckily, one of our small business partners and emergency equipment distributor, Safeware Inc., invited me to join them in exhibiting at the Bird Flu Summit. Click on the link above for an article published by Reuters based on an interview I did at the Summit, or read on for an excerpt:

L to R: Me (in my "Intelligent + Medical" look), Safeware's Safety Expert-Chandler Martin, Safeware's President-Ed Simons, and DuPont's Global Industrial Segment Mgr-Andy Peralla

27 Feb 2006 22:36:28 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Worried that a courier might deliver avian flu along with that book you ordered to pass the time while you wait out the pandemic? Melissa Blankenship, director of sales and marketing for Friendship Industries Inc., has just the product for you. "You could easily wear these while using a keyboard," she said, demonstrating a thin, blue flexible glove. "And if the UPS (United Parcel Service) man comes, for instance, you can put this on for outside protection," she says, holding out a slightly thicker glove.

Companies are gearing up to help protect health care workers and the public in case of a bird flu pandemic, offering portable isolation units, packs with gloves, masks and suits and sanitizing systems. They demonstrated their wares on Monday at the Bird Flu Summit organized by meeting specialist New-Fields.

H5N1 avian influenza has moved steadily across Europe in recent weeks and into parts of Africa, after moving out of southeast Asia for the first time last year. It has killed or forced the slaughter of more than 200 million birds and is beginning to damage the poultry industry in some countries.

It does not yet easily infect people but it has sickened 173, by official World Health Organization count, and killed 93 of them. Experts fear it could change into a strain that easily passes from person to person, causing a pandemic. Public health specialists predict that, if it did, it could infect up to a third of the population in the space of a few weeks, wreck economies, force schools and businesses to close and overwhelm hospitals.

But simple hygiene measures and a little protective equipment could go a long way to guarding against infection, and distributors of these products report a steep rise in interest in recent weeks.

Blankenship said factories in southeast Asia are being re-fitted. "The companies that are making shirts for Wal-Mart, we need them to convert to making personal protective gear," Blankenship said. Her company is checking out potential factories in China, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.