So far the impact of bird flu outbreaks has been isolated to the poultry sector and some farm households and has not spilled into the overall economy.

The benefits of preventing or mitigating an outbreak are likely to be very high.

The impact has been felt by individual rural households, and has only partly been offset by government compensation to farmers.

We are assuming that the shock from a flu epidemic would be even bigger than from SARS.

While the costs of dealing with this have so far been limited to around 0.1 percent of GDP, from culling birds and implementation of better animal health surveillance systems, the potential impact of a serious pandemic is of grave concern.

And it is fair to assume the shock during a flu epidemic could be even larger and last longer than Sars.