President George W. Bush asked Congress for $7.1 billion in emergency funding on Tuesday to prepare the United States for a feared avian-influenza pandemic by building stockpiles of drugs and vaccines and encouraging vaccine makers to modernize.
Bush’s plan would also bolster efforts to globally monitor the disease.
“To respond to a pandemic we must have emergency plans in place in all 50 states, in every local community. We must ensure that all levels of government are ready to act to contain an outbreak,” Bush said in a speech at the National Institutes of Health.
Congress did not immediately respond, but the Senate was scraping together $3.9 billion in an amendment to a spending bill.
The White House request includes $1.2 billion to make 20 million more doses of the current experimental vaccine against H5N1 avian influenza, $2.8 billion to accelerate new flu-vaccine technology and $1 billion to stockpile more antiviral drugs.
The H5N1 avian influenza has so far only infected 122 people and killed 62, but it has spread to poultry flocks across many parts of Asia and into Europe.
It is making steady mutations that scientists say could allow it to spread easily from person to person and cause a catastrophic global pandemic.
“We really view this as a threat that cannot be addressed just within our borders. We see this as an international threat,” Dr. Rajeev Venkayya, Special Assistant to the President for Biological Defense Policy, told reporters in a telephone briefing.
By Maggie Fox and Caren Bohan