Companies should seriously prepare for the flu pandemic -- for their sake, and ours

Governments around the world have spent billions of dollars in recent months planning for a potential influenza pandemic: purchasing medicines, running disaster drills, developing strategies for tighter border controls. Experts say, however, that how well the world weathers such a global health disaster also depends on whether multinational corporations can continue to provide crucial services such as shipping medicines. To date, many companies have made but rudimentary preparedness plans. “Companies need to refresh their disaster plans, their continuity plans, because of the particular challenges pandemic brings,” says Mark Layton, global leader for Enterprise Risk Services at Deloitte & Touche in New York. He noted that conventional disasters, like earthquakes, are generally local and transient, while a pandemic would interrupt business in many parts of the world simultaneously, perhaps for months on end. “I tell companies to use their imagination to think of all the unintended consequences,” Layton said. “Will suppliers be able to deliver goods? How about services they’ve outsourced? Are they still reliable?”

-read more in this International Herald Tribune report