CORE THREATS

Bird Flu

A Pandemic is a global disease outbreak. The longest inter-pandemic period in the 20th century was 39 years; it is now 38 years since the 1968-69 pandemic. Here are the recent examples:-

• H1N1 1918-1919 ‘Spanish Flu’ which killed over 40 million worldwide
• H2N2 1957-1958  ‘Asian Flu’ which killed 1 million
• H3N2 1968-1969 ‘Hong Kong Flu’ which killed 800,000 in 6 weeks

A great deal of modelling work as been done on predicting the percentage of staff that would be absent across the whole of an organisation and the following is generally accepted as the percentages we are likely to encounter in a non manual industry such as ours.

• 5 % - As a result of illness
• 7 % - As a result of caring for family
• 3 % - For other flu related reasons
• 15 % - Total absence at peak period   

The above figures might appear quite low but if one takes into account normal sickness levels and holidays etc it quite quickly could be near 50 % during the peak. And with a mortality rate of 59% there are some major risks we could face.

Pandemic flu makes people unwell to the extent that they have no choice but to be absent from work for a period of up to 2 weeks.

We must remember that this is all about people, not systems or processes, lets be honest the WHO knows that H5N1 or another strain cannot be stopped, only they can slow the initial spread down.

Analysis by Citigroup say that insurance and equity markets will be one of the losers and the winners will be cleaning products, pharmaceutical companies and the media.