The threat of a potential avian flu outbreak on American soil has Illinois revamping its defense plans, and in some cases going on the offensive.

“We have heightened our flu surveillance and we have medical providers who do surveillance and give us weekly reports,” said Peg Carroll, a communicable disease program coordinator.

Craig Conover of the Illinois Department of Public Health said there should be increased surveillance monitoring the virus in Southeast Asia.

The state already is taking steps toward protecting residents.

“Illinois has a pandemic influenza plan based on federal and state guidelines,” Carroll said. “We are currently trying to incorporate the state plan at a local level.”

There have been no cases to date of the avian flu reported in the United States, but there is concern the disease could cross the Pacific Ocean.

In 2003, when SARS surfaced as a fatal disease, people suffered from the disease in Asia one day, and cases of SARS were reported in Canada the next.

“We are only a couple of plane rides away from Southeast Asia,” Conover said.

In order to contract the avian flu, direct contact must be made with an infected bird or a contaminated surface.

“There is concern that the virus may mutate and soon be able to transfer from person to person,” said David Lawrance, medical director of McKinley Health Center in Champaign.

“The H5N1 has the capability to mutate and that is a fear,” Conover said. “It may evolve to the point where it develops the capability to transmit from human to human.”

The virus has not yet mutated, but the threat of the virus doing so poses a threat to humans.

“That is what also makes a possible outbreak serious,” Carroll said. “The avian flu is a direct threat to non-human species, but when it mixes with other viruses it will become even more serious.”

In the event the avian flu does cross the oceans, vaccines would be needed to give to the public, and availability of vaccines has turned out to be its own problem.

“It takes six months with our current manufacturing processes to create an influenza vaccine,” Carroll said. “It would be at least six months before a vaccine could be made to inoculate the public.”

A vaccine for the avian flu to be used by humans does not yet exist. Research and development time is costly and can be drawn-out.

“Currently we don’t have any traditional vaccines against it and vaccines are very hard to make in large quantities,” Lawrance said.

Although some vaccines do exist, human-specific vaccines for the avian flu do not.

“There are some vaccines that are used in birds,” Conover said. “They have produced a couple million doses in the U.S., but that is inadequate right now in terms of what we need.”

The human body has no natural immunity or defense mechanisms against the avian flu, partly because it was not infecting humans until 1997.

“We don’t have a strain that is directly affecting people,” said Carroll. “So we can’t make a vaccine for it yet.

In the event of a nationwide outbreak, Americans are beginning to wonder how prepared the United States might be.

“I’m not sure you can ever say you are completely ready for something as devastating as this,” Conover said. “We have a response plan in place but it is dependant on supplies.”

Conover added if a vaccine that would treat the avian flu in humans could be produced, it could take pandemic flu off the table as a huge public health threat.

There is no way to predict exactly when an influenza outbreak will occur, but they normally occur once every 20 years.