Are you swine flu prepared?

By Siyabonga Africa for Gartner
Johannesburg, 29 Apr 2009

Companies should beef up their business continuity plans and disaster recovery strategies in light of the swine flu outbreak, says Gartner.

The research group says organisations should use the general concern over the disease, now also known as the 'novel flu', to increase enterprise awareness of the potential business impact of a widespread outbreak of disease.

Swine flu has spread from its source in Mexico, where it has claimed over 159 lives, to the US, Canada, Israel and New Zealand.

The Department of Health describes swine flu as a strain of the influenza disease which is endemic to pigs. National Institute for Communicable Diseases deputy director Dr Lucille Blumberg says the current disease is a combination of a pig flu strain and a human flu strain.

“You should use this outbreak as an opportunity to prevent your company from becoming the victim of uncertainty, panic, misinformation and a lack of preparedness,” says Gartner research fellow Ken McGee.

McGee says that besides business continuity and disaster recovery, IT managers should plan, test and add more capacity to networks in order to deal with the bandwidth demand from people working from home should a particular area become affected by the disease.

“And finally, starting from today, IT managers should meet with their senior executives, line of business managers and anyone else to answer any questions they have on the type of impact the novel flu will have on their organisation.”

No threat

The outbreak of the disease has had a noticeable influence on trading markets, pushing the oil price below $50 (R440) a barrel and causing airline, hotels and cruise line shares to plummet.

Media reports say governments around the world have been put on high alert as the disease sparks panic globally.

Yet a local analyst believes SA is safe from the disease, which continues to spread from country to country.

“As far as SA is concerned, we have thus far remained un-impacted by this strand of flu and hopefully things will remain that way,” says Africa Analysis analyst Dobek Pater.

Based on past experiences with other infectious diseases, such as the bird flu epidemic, the country will suffer a limited impact from this disease unless it originates from Southern Africa, he notes.

The analyst adds that with governments making such great efforts to prevent the spread of the disease, it will entail a limited if not non-existent threat to the ICT industry both locally and around the world.