All public health problems have a clinical dimension, and all clinical problems have a public health dimension. At present, the plans in the five countries provide more detail on the public health dimension of the pandemic. There are intercountry differences in the emphases provided to different domains of the general practice response. Some of this reflects the emphasis on particular elements contained within the relevant national plan. Some of the differences are due to the ways in which general practice is structured in a country, and the strengths of its linkages to other components of the health sector. There is an urgent need to incorporate general practice and the broader primary care sector into pandemic planning activities, and to undertake the preparedness activities that would make this sector, which provides the majority of health care work, a true partner in pandemic response. Figure S1 Jurisdictions or health management organizations whose plans were included in the study. Found at: doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002269.s001 (0.04 MB DOC) Apoptotic signals induce specific degradation of ribosomal RNA in yeast Organisms exposed to reactive oxygen species, generated endogenously during respiration or by environmental conditions, undergo oxidative stress. Stress response can either repair the damage or activate one of the programmed cell death (PCD) mechanisms, for example apoptosis, and finally end in cell death. One striking characteristic, which accompanies apoptosis in both vertebrates and yeast, is a fragmentation of cellular DNA and mammalian apoptosis is often associated with degradation of different RNAs. We show that in yeast exposed to stimuli known to induce apoptosis, such as hydrogen peroxide, acetic acid, hyperosmotic stress and ageing, two large subunit ribosomal RNAs, 25S and 5.8S, became extensively degraded with accumulation of specific intermediates that differ slightly depending on cell death conditions. This process is most likely endonucleolytic, is correlated with stress response, and depends on the mitochondrial respiratory status: rRNA is less susceptible to degradation in respiring cells with functional defence against oxidative stress. In addition, RNA fragmentation is independent of two yeast apoptotic factors, metacaspase Yca1 and apoptosis-inducing factor Aif1, but it relies on the apoptotic chromatin condensation induced by histone H2B modifications. These data describe a novel phenotype for certain stress- and ageing-related PCD pathways in yeast. Gene expression in all organisms is regulated at multiple levels, including transcription initiation, mRNA stability and turnover, translation and protein degradation. Not surprisingly, rapid changes in cell metabolism and most responses to environmental stimuli involve significant flux of many cellular RNAs, of which mRNA transcriptome profiles have been most extensively studied to date (1, 2) . However, also stable RNAs, such as ribosomal, transfer, nuclear and nucleolar RNAs (rRNAs, tRNAs, snRNAs and snoRNAs), are likely to undergo specific transformations in altered conditions. It has been demonstrated that certain pathways of cell death are accompanied by the destruction of nucleic acids. For example, in metazoans the programmed cell death (PCD) called apoptosis, in addition to irreversible DNA damage, which is considered an apoptotic hallmark (3) , also involves specific cleavage of several RNA species, including 28S rRNA, U1 snRNA or Ro RNP-associated Y RNAs (4) . It was proposed that rRNA degradation could contribute to cell autodestruction, whereas degradation of anti-apoptotic factors mRNAs would accelerate apoptosis. In higher eukaryotes, RNA cleavage is probably carried out by RNase L, a 2 0 5 0 -oligoadenylate-dependent endoribonuclease, which functions in RNA decay during the interferon-induced response to viral infection, and whose activation in animal cells causes apoptosis (5) (6) (7) . However, RNase L-independent cleavage of 28S rRNA in virus infected cells has also been reported (8) .