SEATTLE--Former Bush administration Health Secretary Tommy G.Thompson warned an insurance executives' conference here yesterdaythat the coming of a flu pandemic is a certainty and they need totake steps to be ready.
"Yes, we are going to have pandemic flu," Mr. Thompson said,noting that such an event has occurred on the average of every 30years, with the last big epidemic occurring in 1918. "We're onborrowed time. It's not if; it's when."
Mr. Thompson, who left his secretary's post a year-and-a-halfago and is now chairman of the Deloitte Center for HealthSolutions, which works on health care and public health issues,said once a fatal flu mutates to transmit from human to human, "itis going to be lethal."
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