The threat of bird flu has dropped off the radar - thus far, avian influenza has killed just over 200 people worldwide with about half occurring in Indonesia - but that doesn't mean the pandemic issue has gone away. Towards the end of last year, the Government Accountability Office released a report warning that the big challenge was "maintaining a focus on pandemic planning efforts due to the uncertainty of when a pandemic may occur". One of the problems would be the need to address more immediate issues.

With this in mind a piece in last month's Harvard Business Review, Pandemic Preparedness: Who's Your Weak Link? , is worth checking out.

The piece looks at how Swiss drug maker Hoffman-La Roche plans for possible pandemics. It looks closely at its supply chain, identifies weaknesses and prioritizes them by ranking each of vendor on a three-point scale (high, medium, low) according to how critical they are to the company's ability to maintain operations in a pandemic.

If you want to read it in more detail, you can find it here.