I can find no clinical evidence that Roche’s Tamiflu is more effective than GlaxoSmithKline’s less-prescribed Relenza against Type A influenza like H1N1 and H5N1.
I have found abundant evidence, however, that Switzerland-based Roche has run marketing circles around U.K.-based GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) by emphasizing the convenience of swallowing a Tamiflu capsule over the hassle of inhaling Relenza powder.
It can be tough to justify the value of a BCP job these days. The biggest threat most professionals worry about these days is unemployment: our own. Here are three ideas to mitigate that risk that will increase a BCP manager’s value to an organization.
The Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre invites you to attend a one week resident course on “Incident Command System (ICS) for Disaster Management” from 10-16 August 2009 in Phuket, Thailand. This is the first time ADPC has offered an ICS course, and one of the few places in Asia an ICS course is available.
The course offers an in-depth explanation of ICS structure and helps you learn to use ICS to manage an incident. To see the basics of ICS, have a look at these slides from the US Environmental Protection Agency. The outline of the course is in this course brochure. Visit the ADPC website for more information.
I have upbraided SPRING Singapore and the Singapore Business Federation for failing to promote effectively Singapore’s erstwhile business continuity management (BCM) standard TR 19 between its birth in 2005 and its demise in 2008. But for stealth and invisibility, it’s hard to beat the clandestine work of Malaysia’s national standards company, SIRIM Berhad, on behalf of MS1970, Malaysia’s national BCM standard.
What does it really mean for an individual to be “certified” in business continuity? Like the euphemism “sub-prime”, the word “certified” is losing its meaning in Asia as the number and variety of BCM certifications and their purveyors grow like vines in the jungle. Attend a course, get the certificate and poof! You’re certified! In Asia, for example, you can become certified by the BCM Institute as a Business Continuity Certified Professional (BCCP) with no prior BCM experience if you fork out US 840, spend one day in a class and another half day answering fifty questions on a test. You do not have to answer all of them correctly. That’s a fast-track bargain by any standard. The BCMI offers plenty more certifications, too.
In July 2008, I wrote that Technical Reference 19 (TR 19:2005), Singapore’s proposed international standard for business continuity management (BCM), appeared to be dying a slow death and suggested that the prognosis for it might be terminal. I was wrong. It turns out that the patient just needed cosmetic surgery. Singapore’s standards body SPRING revealed in October a new Asian face for BCM, Singapore Standard 540 (SS540). Like TR19, SS540 is a BCM standard for certification of organizations, not practitioners, but unlike TR 19, which was to be an international standard, SS540 is specifically aimed at Singapore companies and organizations.
I suppose that putting up posters in your office might raise awareness of risk, security, audit, fraud, theft and other naughty behaviors. New Zealand IT consulting company IsecT Limited publishes risk management posters for that purpose every month on their NoticeBored web site. The company has been distributing free, high-resolution posters since May 2006; there are five or six new ones each month. (The April 2008 selections featuring auditors are amusing.) I’d like to be at a brain-storming session where these are dreamed up; I’ll bet that beer is involved…
Many hospitals are unprepared to deal with large numbers of dead bodies - a mass fatality incident, or MFI - that would result from an earthquake or flu pandemic. A ‘mortality surge’ would overwhelm morgue capacity, as it did in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, for example. U.S. hospitals are required to develop MFI plans by August, 2009, and the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency has published “Mass Fatality Incident Management: Guidance for Hospitals and Other Healthcare Entities”, available on the Los Angeles County Health Services web site.
I think of organizational resilience as a chain that links security, emergency management (EM), disaster recovery, business continuity management (BCM) and crisis management. A resilient organization deploys appropriate security, has an I.T. disaster recovery plan, exercises its business continuity plan and has a separate crisis management plan. But most organizations do not make emergency management plans, in my experience. Emergency management in the private sector is the weakest link in the resilience chain. That may be because there are substantial differences between emergency management (EM) and business continuity management (BCM) in scope, scale and skills.
The Wenchuan earthquake in China’s Sichuan province in May drew worldwide attention to the enormous impact of a big earthquake, even in areas with low population density: 70,000 people killed, 18,000 missing, 375,000 injured, and 5 million people homeless. And that was only the second-deadliest earthquake in Chinese history: the Tangshan earthquake was worse (250,000 people killed, 150,000 injured) and that took place just 30 years ago in 1976. Need help? In Singapore, call: +65 6324-3091 Fax: +65 6324-3093 Email: info@calamity.com.sg
 : nathaniel_forbes | AOL IM: KingmanReefPowered by Littlebulb Ideas | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
reddit
