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ASEAN Officials Participate in Unique Pandemic Exercise

   VOA News 16 August 2010
   Scott  Weidie,  with the Multinational Planning Augmentation Team from
   Honolulu, Hawaii, speaks at the opening of the Southeast Asia Regional
   Multisectoral Pandemic Preparedness and Respond Table Top Ex

Photo: AP

   Scott  Weidie,  with the Multinational Planning Augmentation Team from
   Honolulu, Hawaii, speaks at the opening of the Southeast Asia Regional
   Multisectoral Pandemic Preparedness and Respond Table Top Exercise, in
   Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 16 Aug. 2010

   Health  officials  from  across  Southeast Asia are participating in a
   unique  five-day  exercise  to  see  how  well they would respond to a
   pandemic in a fictional continent called "Pandemica."
   The ASEAN-led exercise, which began Monday in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, is
   the  first of its kind. It also involves the World Health Organization
   and  other  U.N.  agencies  and  has  funding from the U.S. Agency for
   International Development.
   Officials say the exercise deals not only with the health consequences
   of  a  pandemic.  Participants  are  also  practicing  how  they would
   maintain  essential  services such as energy and mass transport in the
   face of widespread illness.
   The  region  was  hard-hit by SARS in 2003 and by a human form of bird
   flu in 2004.

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   Some information for this report was provided by AFP.

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