On the eve of the unveiling of the latest anti-pandemic strategy, Australia's flu fighters are still based in hopelessly outmoded headquarters. Signs warn of ants in the kitchen, tape holds the air-conditioning flues together, and the biosecurity measures are inadequate. The Australian World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza is a series of ageing red-brick buildings on the site of CSL's big vaccine-making plant in Parkville, opposite the Commonwealth Games village.
Compared with its three partners in Atlanta, Tokyo and London, it is a relic. The centre's deputy director, Alan Hampson, began his career here in 1958 - and he is on the verge of retirement.
Now that Asian bird flu is threatening to become a pandemic, the work identifying the virus' characteristics has to be done elsewhere in Victoria - such as in the highly secure animal biosecurity laboratory in Geelong. "We can't handle the live virus here in our lab," Mr Hampson says. "We have to rely on other laboratories to help us."
Despite such drawbacks, the country has managed to become what Australia's Chief Medical Officer, John Horvath, believes is one of the best-prepared nations for a flu pandemic. The Federal Government put aside $114 million in last year's budget to build a stockpile of anti-viral drugs, 50 million syringes, 40 million surgical masks and extra hospital equipment. This followed an estimate that a major flu pandemic could lead 2.6 million Australians to seek medical attention, put 58,000 people in hospital, and kill 13,000.
For its preparedness, Australia can probably thank Mr Hampson, who initiated pandemic planning in the mid-1990s. He became concerned about a flu pandemic, and began knocking on the doors of health officials - without much success.
"When the chicken flu thing broke out in 1997, people started to listen," he said.
In the latest federal budget, $23 million was allocated to rebuild the WHO centre. Although he will not reap the benefit, Mr Hampson is pleased there will be a new laboratory - expected to be finished within 18 months, somewhere yet to be announced. He has also contributed to the most up-to-date strategy for coping with a killer flu pandemic. This is expected to be launched tomorrow by federal Health Minister Tony Abbott, who has described the pandemic as potentially "a worldwide biological version of the Indian Ocean tsunami".
The strategy, supported by all states and territories, is an attempt to prepare for the consequences if Asia's avian flu strain, now caught only from birds, mutates to enable human-to-human transmission in a severe form.
Australia's plan is expected to settle the contentious issues of border control, quarantine and who gets access to anti-viral drugs. Drawn up by the National Influenza Pandemic Advisory Committee, it will set out what will be done to slow the spread of a pandemic and establish how essential services will be maintained while vaccines are developed to protect the whole population.
Health authorities have warned of a possible re-run of the Spanish flu pandemic of 1919, which killed an estimated 40 million people worldwide, including 12,000 in Australia.
To date, fewer than 100 people have died as a result of the flu in Asia, where it has been devastating bird life. But the virus' behaviour led WHO to warn earlier this year that the world was "now in the gravest possible danger of a pandemic". Health authorities are taking the threat seriously.
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