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If Flu Hits, Will State Be Ready?

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 October 2005, 00:00 CDT

By Karen Shideler, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.

Oct. 11--Almost 500,000 Kansans could need medical care and 2,500 could die during an influenza pandemic, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment estimates.

Businesses would stall as sick employees stayed home; garbage collection and home meal delivery would stop; day cares would close.

The pandemic -- a worldwide outbreak of influenza -- could continue for a year to a year and a half, not the four or five months that the flu season normally lasts.

That scenario is laid out in KDHE's Kansas Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Plan, released Monday.

The plan is the state's forecast of what resources -- from anti-viral drugs to quarantines to buildings for sick people -- would be needed to minimize the impact of an influenza pandemic. Similar planning has taken place at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and at the World Health Organization and is under way in other states.

For years, health officials have said a pandemic is inevitable. As reports of avian flu increase, efforts to plan for such an outbreak have intensified.

So far, the viruses that cause influenza have been familiar ones that have mutated, which means many people have some limited immunity to them and vaccines are available to prevent them.

That's why Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, KDHE Secretary Rodrick Bremby, state health director Howard Rodenberg and state epidemiologist Gail Hansen also reminded Kansans to get their flu shots and to take actions -- washing their hands frequently, eating right and otherwise taking care of themselves -- to prevent the flu.

But they also acknowledged that, sooner or later, a new influenza virus will emerge. It could be a strain of the avian virus now found in parts of Asia.

Humans wouldn't have any immunity to such a virus, they said, and developing and manufacturing a vaccine could take six to eight months.

Meanwhile, lots of people would be getting sick.

The state plan estimates that between 4,600 and 10,700 Kansans would require hospitalization -- in addition to those already hospitalized for other reasons. That could push the need for hospital beds to 10,000 -- but only 6,941 beds are available.

In such a scenario, many surgeries would be canceled, patients who didn't have the flu would be transferred to other facilities, and community buildings might be used as sick wards.

That's not as far-fetched as it might seem: Something similar happened when Wichita geared up to receive evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, setting up Century II to house 1,800 people, said Gloria Vermie, Sedgwick County's public health emergency management coordinator.

She said Sedgwick County has been working on its response plan for about 2 ½ years. The local and state plans are a template of actions that would be needed for any sort of mass medical care.

For example, Vermie said, keeping essential services going would be a priority.

That's why the state plan lists utility workers, food suppliers, morticians and National Guard members among those who would be "priority recipients" of any medication available to prevent influenza.

It also includes references to state laws already in place on issues from the disposal of human remains to the authority to declare and enforce a quarantine.

Rodenberg noted how quickly influenza spread in 1918, during the Spanish flu pandemic, as military troops were shipped to different parts of the world. In today's society, a new virus would spread even more quickly.

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To see more of The Wichita Eagle, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.kansas.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.)

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