Online bird flu response training offered

[MHSC]

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr> <td valign="top" width="72%"><table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="98%"> <tbody><tr> <td>Earthtimes.org
<hr noshade="noshade"></td> </tr> <tr> <td valign="top"> <table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" width="99%"> <tbody><tr> <td> Online bird flu response training offered </td> </tr> <tr> <td><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td width="83%">Posted on : 2007-05-16 | Author : Science News Editor
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<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="2" width="100%"> <tbody><tr valign="top"> <td> WASHINGTON, May 16 (UPI) The U.S. government is making available a three-day training course to teach public health responders how to deal with an avian influenza outbreak.The online course offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists provides a standardized curriculum for local and state health system first responders concerning how to identify and control human infections and illness associated with the H5N1 strain of bird flu.The training focuses on human health issues during an avian influenza investigation. Through lectures, reference materials and case studies, the course provides mechanisms to facilitate discussion and planning among people who may be called upon to respond to an avian influenza outbreak in the United States.Although no H5N1 cases in birds or humans have been found in the United States, parts of Asia, Africa and Europe have reported widespread infections, causing 172 human deaths and devastating large numbers of poultry.Public-health officials around the world consider H5N1 to be the greatest current pandemic influenza threat.The course is available at http://www.cste.org/influenza/avian.asp.Copyright 2007 by United Press International
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[Laidback Al]

Re: Online bird flu response training offered

The instructional material is posted as powerpoint, pdf files, and Word documents at: http://www.cste.org/influenza/avian.asp

A quick review of the scenarios and "suggested answers" in the facilitator packets indicates that CDC believes H5N1 will first be confirmed in poultry in the US. A prime criteria for diagnosing H5N1 in humans is "contact with poultry". I did not see in my cursory review of the table top exercises any scenarios that involved recognizing cases based on human to human contact at the very beginning of a pandemic. That is, there was no scenario that involved an infected traveller spreading the virus in a local setting. The initial vector in these exercises always seems to be infected poultry.