Task Force formed to prepare for pandemic
Task Force formed to prepare for pandemic
By JANE NORDBERG, DMG Writer
HANCOCK — If and when a pandemic hits the Copper Country, it will take more than the regional health community to respond, according to representatives from the Western U.P. Health Department.
“Science is telling us that there’s something on the horizon that has the potential to have a huge impact on our community,” Health Department Chief Executive Officer Guy St. Germain told community leaders gathered Wednesday at the Copper Country Intermediate School District offices in Hancock.
St. Germain, along with WUPHD medical director Gail Shebuski and emergency preparedness planner Ray Sharp, spoke with invited representatives from emergency management, education, law enforcement and communication sectors to include them in the discussion.
“Although the bulk of the planning falls to the medical community, it’s not enough for hospitals to have a great plan,” Shebuski said. “It’s important that everybody knows what they’re going to do if the worst happens.”
The worst, as described by Shebuski in great detail during her PowerPoint presentation entitled, “Influenza 101,” would be the type of worldwide effects seen during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, when approximately 20 to 40 million people died worldwide, over 500,000 of them in the United States.
The medical community is used to “antigenic drift,” which is a seasonal minor mutation of the kind that requires a different flu vaccine from year to year, Shebuski said. Based on last year’s flu classification, the Center for Disease Control makes a “best guess” and prepares a vaccine for the next year’s outbreak.
What the medical community can’t predict, she explained, is the type of major genetic changes to the influenza structure known as “antigenic shift,” which happens too quickly for a vaccine to be created and distributed and results in widespread sickness.
“The type of pandemic we’re talking about will cause 40 percent of the nation’s workforce to become sick,” she said. In that case, schools would likely be turned into makeshift hospitals and clinics, and universities would have to determine whether to send students home or keep them quarantined.
Law enforcement personnel would need to be trained to deal with the type of panic that might ensue, the media would need to distribute a unified message and emergency services personnel would be faced with the task of helping those who aren’t sick go about their daily lives.
“Those of us who aren’t sick will still need refrigerated milk, working traffic lights and a way to get the snow off the road,” Shebuski said.
Three conditions must be met for a pandemic to start, she said.
There must be an emergence of a new influenza subtype, the ability for the strain to infect humans and cause serious illness, and the ability to spread easily between humans.
Of those, it’s the last one that is the most important, Shebuski said, citing recent cases of avian flu that have raised public awareness and in some cases, panic.
“It hasn’t shown the ability to be passed from human to human, and until it makes that mutation, it won’t be a pandemic,” she said. “That missing piece gives us a little sigh of relief.”
Right now, the World Health Organization has issued a Stage 3 pandemic alert, which is defined as “no or very limited human-to-human transmission.”
Evidence of increased or significant human-to-human transmission will elevate the alerts to Stages 4 and 5, which Shebuski said would spur the medical community to kick its pandemic plans into high gear.
“It’s reassuring at this stage, but it’s a pivotal issue,” she said. “At Stage 4, we would really start to worry.”
Sharp said while preparedness was new to the world of community health, it was vital that all core sectors of the community have a plan in place in the next twelve months.
“Plans must be realistic, achievable and operational,” he said, not just be a binder of vague goals that would be placed on a shelf in a locked office and forgotten about. “They should contain specific, simple directive information with detailed contact information.”
Michigan Tech University Dean of Students Gloria Melton said that while emergency planning was already in effect at the university, she and her colleagues attending the meeting found it effective and informative.
“It’s good to know we’re all working together,” she said.
Carol Carr, public relations coordinator for Keweenaw Memorial Medical Center, agreed.
“It’s wonderful to see a coordinated effort, because it’s important that we all know what’s expected,” she said. “It’s good to see public health taking the lead.”
Houghton and Keweenaw County Emergency Services Coordinator Jack Dueweke said plans were in place to hold a mock emergency drill in October, when people normally getting their annual flu shot would be asked to do it en masse at a specified time and place.
In the meantime, Shebuski repeated the mantra of health professionals everywhere by encouraging the public to practice basic common sense.
“We’d cut our transmission of diseases in half if we could just get people to wash their hands,” she said.
For more information, see www.westernuphealth.org or www.pandemicflu.gov.
Jane Nordberg can be reached at jnordberg@mininggazette.com
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