Ohio Department of Health Warns of Flu Pandemic

By Misti Crane, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Aug. 4–Maybe you’ve seen the TV ads or heard the ominous voice on the radio warning Ohioans to prepare for a flu outbreak the likes of which could radically alter life as we know it.

Reminding viewers of the toll of past flu pandemics, the TV ad shows a vacant football stadium, a classroom emptied of students and a field of gravestones before a voice warns, “It will happen again.”

The ad campaign is brought to you by the Ohio Department of Health and was designed to prompt visits to the state’s repository of flu-preparedness information: ohiopandemicflu.gov.

Nothing considerable has changed in terms of an imminent threat in the United States since government leaders began issuing urgent warnings about pandemic flu a few years ago. Cases of bird flu continue to crop up abroad and experts still say a pandemic is inevitable, although they have no idea when it might happen or how severe it would be. The last three were in 1918, 1957 and 1968.

The current campaign is supposed to serve as a reminder that pandemic flu is important, even as local health authorities watch federal money dedicated to such efforts disappear.

The ads are “certainly edgy,” said Bret Atkins, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Health.

Without a pressing and obvious threat, it can be difficult to convince the public to do things such as maintain a supply of food and water in the event of an emergency, he said.

Making that task more difficult, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant money for pandemic flu dries up at the end of this week, Atkins said.

He’s concerned that the resources for preparing for a flu outbreak will wane as a result.

Since August 2006, Ohio received more than $14million to spend on pandemic-flu preparedness. The state held on to $5.5million and funneled the rest to local health departments.

Work in the past several years has included drafting plans for handling large numbers of sick and dying people, communicating with the public and lowering the risk of disease transmission.

The advertising part of the picture is a relatively small one. This year, the state spent $439,152 on TV and radio spots, which began running in Dayton last month. The Columbus spots started last week and end Friday.

Before the ads started, visits to the pandemic flu Web site averaged less than two dozen a day, Atkins said. On Aug. 1, there were 1,998 visitors.

Mel House, operations division director for the Ohio Emergency Management Agency, said a diverse group of people and agencies have come together to address how they’d respond together to a large-scale health crisis.

“We’ve made significant progress, not that we don’t have a lot more to do,” he said.

While efforts will slow without pandemic-flu grant money, House said he’s convinced work will continue in earnest.

One big challenge that still must be addressed, he said, is figuring out how to triage patients.

“If you don’t have enough resources to take care of all the patients who are critical, how do you make the decisions about standard of care?” he said.

The overall challenge will be how to keep agencies and individual Ohio residents prepared in the long term, House said.

Nobody knows, after all, when a pandemic might happen.

mcrane@dispatch.com

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