Pandemic Contingency Planning
Mike Langberg writes in The Mercury News: “Planning for bird flu makes business sense.” It’s an informative article; read it.
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Coping with a pandemic isn’t just a public health concern. It’s also a vital economic issue, because the shock waves from a pandemic — people staying home instead of going to work or school — could trigger a major recession.
Corporations need to start making pandemics part of their contingency plans, which often focus on more traditional natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, fires and snowstorms.
But now the heightened fears of an influenza outbreak, with the fearsome H5N1 virus already claiming 120 lives in Asia, is bringing attention to the usually obscure field of “business continuity” consulting.
On Tuesday, IBM announced that its consulting arm will start offering planning services specifically for pandemics, “aimed at helping businesses understand their potential exposure to a pandemic outbreak, and implement strategies to safeguard employees and maintain operations should such an outbreak occur.”