According to an estimate by the Asian Development Bank, the economic impact of SARS was around $ 18 billion in East Asia, which comes to around 0.6 per cent of their total GDP (ADB, 2003).
The recent outbreak of the avian influenza (H5N1), popularly known as avian flu, which started in late 2003, has raised concerns about a new global pandemic as experts fear that the H5N1 virus strain will mutate just enough to allow it to pass easily from person to person, potentially causing a catastrophic pandemic as humans lack immunity to it.