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Brits: Pandemic as big a threat as terror


Published: March 24, 2008 at 12:11 PM
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LONDON, March 24 (UPI) -- The British government is taking an all-hazards approach to national security, saying infectious disease and extreme weather are as threatening as terrorism.

In a statement to Parliament unveiling his government's new national security strategy, Prime Minister Gordon Brown last week pledged to defend the country against what he called new "great insecurities: war, terrorism and now climate change, disease and poverty."

He said these new threats "redefine national security not just as the protection of the state but as the protection of all people."

Of all the civil emergencies -- "infectious disease, extreme weather, and man-made emergencies" --assessed in the strategy, officials believe "the highest risk is an influenza-type pandemic," which could kill between 50,000 and 750,000 in Britain.

Such a pandemic, which could result for instance from the mutation to a human-transmissible strain of the avian flu virus H5N1, would likely spread much more rapidly than in the past because of globalization, the report says, noting that is what happened with the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

British officials staged a planning exercise last fall called Operation Winter Willow to gauge the effects of such a pandemic and prepare a response.

The second-highest risk is coastal flooding, says the strategy, recalling the inundation of 1,000 miles of the east coast in 1953, which killed 300 people. "Even with today's improved defenses, a repeat of coastal or tidal flooding on that scale could result in the flooding of hundreds of thousands of properties, and the need to evacuate and shelter hundreds of thousands of people," says the strategy.

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