IAEM Finds Little Interest in Flu Sessions
Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 5/22/2006
A survey by the Intl. Assn. for Exhibition Management found that more members are interested in attending a session on exhibit booth sales than one addressing avian flu or crisis prevention and management.
In the survey, nearly 75 percent of members said they were likely to attend an education session on exhibit booth sales, compared with 30 percent interested in attending a session on crisis prevention or the bird flu.
IAEM is planning sessions on both crisis management and avian flu for its June 20–22 Professional Development Conference in Rosemont. The sessions are designed to help companies come up with steps to mitigate a potential pandemic's effect on their organization and events.
If IAEM members want another way to learn about avian flu, they can visit the pandemic Web site (http://www.pandemicflu.gov) set up by the federal government. The site includes checklists on what businesses, communities, individuals and public health officials can do to prepare for a possible pandemic.
The federal government is also warning that it will have limited ability to react to a possible pandemic.
Avian flu has killed hundreds of thousands of birds worldwide, and sickened more than 200 humans that have had close contact with birds, according to the World Health Organization. So far, it has not spread from human to human. Health officials fear that if the virus spreads among humans, it will quickly become a pandemic. Effective immunizations do not yet exist.
The H5N1 virus causing the current outbreak is deadly. There's no vaccination for the virus and it's resistant to traditional antiviral treatments.
