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Rural communities aid Arkansas in event of flu pandemic
By ANNIE BERGMAN
Sunday, December 17, 2006 12:46 AM CST
LITTLE ROCK - Arkansas' tightly knit rural communities, where people often volunteer to help their neighbors, could make the state better-equipped to deal with pandemic flu or other widespread illnesses if and when they arrive.
"Arkansas is really a state were everybody seems to know and have a connection to everyone else," said Dr. William Mason, the director of preparedness and emergency response for the Arkansas Department of Health and Human Services. "And that is a very good thing from our viewpoint with regard to pandemic flu."
At the government's request, states began planning for a potential pandemic years ago, but the emergence of bird flu in 2003 brought a greater urgency. In 2004, just 29 states had pandemic plans of some sort; today all have at least a draft on paper addressing what steps they would take to survive it.
In Arkansas, planning for a pandemic began nearly eight years ago, said Richard Taffner, the state Strategic National Stockpile Coordinator. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began allocating money to all 50 states for bioterrorism prevention, the state started to make more formal plans.
The CDC stipulated that states must have a mass vaccination plan for each county in case of a pandemic. State health officials held its first drill in 2002 in Baxter County, offering flu shots during a practice run for a mass vaccination. Every county has since run one.
Nearly 58,000 Arkansas received flu vaccinations, and Arkansas became the first state to perform mass immunization clinics in every county in a single day, said Ann Wright, a Health and Human Services spokeswoman.
"Our mass flu clinics were so successful ... that we can really be proud," Wright said. "In the event of a pandemic we may only have a few days, a few weeks at most to mobilize. But we know already that we communicate very efficiently with our communities."
And communication between the federal, state and local levels is key to keeping people alive during a pandemic, Taffner said.
Taffner said Arkansas is stockpiling 692,000 doses of anti-viral drugs, which is enough to treat 25 percent of the state's population in a pandemic, a number the CDC recommends. The state is also stockpiling other supplies like protective equipment for health care workers.
Distributing those doses and equipment would fall to local communities in the event of a pandemic, he said, and the four years of practice has taught many lessons about coordinating and communication, Taffner said.
"Every time we do one (mass-vaccination drill), we learn a little bit more." Taffner said. "We're getting pretty darn good at giving flu shots."
Taffner said at one exercise in Yellville, the local health unit had 250 volunteers ready to help in anyway the county might need them. He said that kind of involvement is mirrored across all the communities in Arkansas.
And Mason said the people in the small communities are key to keeping the state running during a pandemic.
"Our major goal is to keep essential services in this state going _ hospitals, medical care providers, emergency responders like fire departments, the police, utilities going, the garbage _ things to allow us to continue to function as a state and in each community," Mason said. "Everything becomes very, very local _ we know that we cannot count on the federal government."
Though federal health officials have praised Arkansas' preparations for pandemic flu _ assistant secretary of health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Dr. John Agwunobi said very few states had "come as far as Arkansas" in planning _ state health officials acknowledge gaps have emerged in the preparedness plans.
According to the report released last week "Ready or Not: Protecting the Public's Health from Disease, Disasters and Bioterrorism," by Trust for America's Health, Arkansas is in the lower tier when it comes to states' preparedness for bird flu, health emergencies and bioterrorism, while Kansas and Oklahoma were the most prepared.
The report showed Arkansas was among 40 states and Washington, D.C. that had a shortage of public nurses, and the state was one of six that saw cuts to its public health budget between fiscal years 2004-05 and 2005-06, the report said.
Despite the report, Wright said the plan is a "work in progress" and that the work will continue. Every county is holding planning meetings, and the state has met with county judges and county health officers to discuss pandemic influenza.
The state also has a speaker's bureau and continually speak to Rotary, Lions and other civic clubs, and has a work group that is reaching out to religious groups, she said.
But the state can't prepare for everything, and gaps will always be there, Mason said.
The gaps identified included traffic problems including parking, how to store vaccine at a mobile site, how to process people through the process of obtaining medications and various security issues.
"We can't plan for every single event that might happen in a pandemic influenza outbreak," Mason said.