Administration Officials Hold a News Briefing On the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan One-Year Summary

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Administration Officials Hold a News Briefing On the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan One-Year Summary

ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS HOLD A NEWS BRIEFING ON THE NATIONAL STRATEGY FOR PANDEMIC INFLUENZA IMPLEMENTATION PLAN ONE-YEAR SUMMARY, AS RELEASED BY THE WHITE HOUSE

JULY 17, 2007

SPEAKERS: RAJEEV VENKAYYA, ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT FOR BIODEFENSE

DR. JOHN CLIFFORD, USDA CHIEF VETERINARIAN

AMBASSADOR JOHN LANGE, SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE ON AVIAN AND PANDEMIC INFLUENZA

JOHN AGWUNOBI, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF HEALTH DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

JEFF RUNGE, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

[*] STAFF: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for coming to today's session. I want to welcome you to our discussion of the first year of implementation of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. And a quick word about the logistics of today's briefing. We will begin the briefing with remarks from Dr. Rajeev Venkayya, Special Assistant to the President for Biodefense. From the State Department we have Ambassador John Lange, Special Representative on Avian and Pandemic Influenza. From USDA, we have Dr. John Clifford, USDA Chief Veterinarian. From HHS, we have Admiral John Agwunobi, Assistant Secretary of Health. And from DHS, we have Dr. Jeff Runge, Chief Medical Officer.

I want to remind you that today's briefing is on the record. And for members of the media who are here in attendance, I request that you wait until the conclusion of the stakeholder briefing and ask your questions at that time. The participants will stick around for media questions after the stakeholder briefing. Thank you.

And with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Venkayya.

VENKAYYA: Thank you, Cynthia. And I want to thank all of you for joining us today. We wanted to take this opportunity on or around the one-year anniversary of the implementation plan of the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza to summarize our progress.

You will have received or had access to a glossy narrative report of our progress that was available outside. That document will be made available over the web at pandemicflu.gov, and we anticipate that being on the White House website, as well. There's also a blow-by- blow, action-by-action report similar to the one that we released in December around the six-month time frame that describes our assessment as to where we are in each one of the actions that was due to be completed within 12 months.

Just to quickly recap what events brought us here, back in November, as I think many of you are aware, the President released the -- November of 2005 -- the President released the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, largely to highlight the need to transform this from an animal health and human health issue to a national priority -- a national security priority, a national health priority, a national economic priority.

In addition to doing that domestically, we did that internationally. We established the International Partnership on Avian and Pandemic Influenza, and the Department of State has led an aggressive effort to engage our international partners to further emphasize the importance of addressing this pandemic threat.

The strategy is a very high-level document. It lays out the principles that guide our international efforts. The implementation plan released in May of last year provides over 300 actions that direct federal departments and agencies to act in the name of the principals in the strategy itself. Each of those has a measure of performance and a timeline for completion, hence the report at one year. We're basically cataloguing our progress on those 12-month actions.

Before I turn to my colleagues, I'd like to just quickly run through the reason...

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