National Flu Plan: Locales on Their Own
By James Amos, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.
Jun. 11–The federal government’s strategy for the anticipated avian flu pandemic is pretty simple for Pueblo and other communities: Be prepared to take care of yourselves for a while.
The “National Strategy For Pandemic Influenza” was released to the public and state and local health officials recently and it outlines the federal government’s thinking on how the country will try to prevent, or at least cope with, an outbreak of avian flu.
“Those are all things that we have been working on even before we got the national strategy,” said Dr. Christine Nevin-Woods, Pueblo’s health department director.
For example, the Pueblo department has met with representatives of the local media to start working out how best to inform the public and how media outlets can keep performing that role while grappling with flu absences themselves.
The local department also plans to hold a town meeting later this summer to tell people how they need to prepare. Nevin-Woods also said her department will hold a summit for business owners and managers to talk about how to keep things going if or when the flu strikes.
The pandemic could keep as many as 40 percent of the work force from work, she said. That could start to affect things like grocery stores and utilities.
The national strategy is focusing attention on the fact that communities like Pueblo must be prepared ahead of time, she said, because many are not yet taking it seriously.
“They’re still under the impression that if there’s an emergency that we can send sick patients out, and that the state and federal government will help us,” she said. “That won’t be possible, at least initially, because all communities will probably be hit at the same time.
“We have to be prepared to take care of ourselves. And the better we prepare ahead of time, the better we can do that.”
While the national strategy document mentions federal stockpiles of flu supplies, the plan also encourages local communities to create their own stockpiles.
“I worry that it may not give us the total supply that we need,” Nevin-Woods said of the proposed national stockpiles.
Nevin-Woods said she’s already started working on getting masks for public health workers so they can work with infected patients. She has asked city and county officials for the money for a three-day supply, but will likely need much more.
The director said she’d like to see some more details in the national strategy document, but those will probably be worked out in the coming months.
One category that needs more information is how citizens should best separate themselves from each other if the pandemic strikes in order to cut down on transmission of the virus.
While Nevin-Woods said she already knows the power health agencies have to close schools, theaters and otherwise keep people at home, she needs to know more about when to institute those changes and how best to educate and encourage the public to follow them.
Still to be determined are details such as how Pueblo would cope with quarantining one part of town, but still handle people who have elderly or otherwise dependent relatives in the quarantined areas, she said.
Unlike in a hurricane, bombing or other disaster, she said the victims needing care, the quarantining and the other effects of the pandemic are likely to last for weeks or a few months.
“The more people understand this ahead of time, the less chance that they’ll panic or we’re getting into community violence or looting,” she said. “It has to be a volunteer effort. There’s no way you can have law enforcement make people stay a home.”
While there is no vaccine yet for the avian flu, Nevin-Woods said one will eventually be developed when the virus changes and becomes easily transmittable person-to-person.
The Pueblo health department will hold a mass vaccination of about 10,000 residents against the seasonal flu in November in order to practice organizing and carrying out a mass vaccination, she said.
Being vaccinated against the seasonal flu probably won’t help against the avian flu, but it will give health workers a chance to see what they’re up against in terms of the logistics of a mass vaccination.
Nevin-Woods’ department also will host a table-top exercise about the avian flu next week, she said. It will include representatives from hospitals, law enforcement and other agencies and give them a chance to prepare as if the flu is here and experiment with how they can cope with it.
“The key message,” she said, “is that everyone needs to prepare.”
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NATIONAL FLU STRATEGY
The federal government’s strategy to combat the anticipated avian flu pandemic focuses on three “pillars”:
* Preparedness and communication: the planning and cooperation needed before a pandemic strikes, and the assigning of roles and responsibilities among national, state and local agencies. * Surveillance and detection: keeping an eye on where the disease has emerged, both internationally and in the United States, tracking its progress and providing early warnings. * Response and containment: the actions of public health workers quarantining areas and trying to treat or at least comfort large numbers of sick or potentially sick people. Also the efforts needed to keep necessary economic and other activities going.
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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