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Maine: Leaders in all 16 counties ready outbreak response
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Leaders in all 16 counties ready outbreak response
Friday, April 28, 2006 - Bangor Daily News << Back
It's hard to imagine what might happen if Maine were to experience an outbreak of avian influenza. But that is exactly what community leaders in all 16 counties are being asked to do as they prepare a comprehensive response plan required by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the federal government.
Guided by a 15-page checklist issued by the Maine CDC last week, county-level directors from the Maine Emergency Management Agency have begun convening groups of key community members, ranging from health care providers and school superintendents to morticians and fire chiefs, to think about the unthinkable - an extensive breakdown of the social infrastructure accompanied by a surge in demand for the very services that are most likely to be unavailable.
By April 30, directors are instructed to have established pandemic planning "leadership teams" and a schedule of meetings, as well as a process for gathering and recording an extensive inventory of information.
The leadership team will then work with area responders and other statewide preparedness groups to create a plan for dealing with all manner of pandemic-related crises. A draft of each county's completed plan must be filed with the state by the beginning of August.
The plan must include a mechanism for monitoring how many hospital beds, doses of flu vaccine and mechanical ventilators are available in the county as well as how many bodies are piling up because there's no one available to bury or cremate them.
It must contain provisions for providing health care services, food and water to sick people who may be quarantined at home in order to limit the spread of the outbreak. If a vaccine becomes available, counties must have a plan for distributing that vaccine, or other medications, to a desperate and panicky population.
And planners are charged with ensuring the continued operation of key services such as police, fire, trash removal, fuel delivery and public utilities such as electricity, water and gas.
Because the goal is to keep people apart as much as possible, there will be no emergency shelters. Gathering places such as schools, churches, shopping centers, theaters, sports arenas, festivals and fairs are likely to be closed while the pandemic runs its course.
This could last from several weeks to a year or longer - and planners must make provisions for announcing those closing and providing alternatives as needed.
"It's a huge charge, no matter how you slice it," said Dr. Dora Mills, head of the Maine CDC. But, she added, several counties have already begun their planning process and she's confident that most will meet the August deadline.
Several rural counties such as Franklin and Aroostook are already well into their planning, she noted, perhaps because in sparsely populated regions "all the players already know each other."
Public health officials around the globe are predicting a major outbreak among humans of a virulent influenza strain that is presently affecting wild and domestic birds in Europe and Asia.
About 200 cases in humans have been reported, but they are thought to have been transmitted from infected birds to people who have come in close contact with them. About half the humans infected have died.
No cases in birds or humans have been reported in North America, but experts believe the disease in birds will make its way here this year, arriving first on the Pacific coast with migrating flocks of wild birds.
The public health community predicts the virus that causes the disease in birds may mutate into a form that is easily spread among humans by airborne droplets from coughs or sneezes. Given the ease of world travel, they say, it is likely that an avian flu outbreak, no matter where it begins, would spread quickly around the globe.
And because this particular strain is especially virulent, they predict high rates of infection and death. Conservative estimates from the federal CDC predict that 30 percent of Americans could be infected, and that two percent of those infected will die.
Maine officials anticipate a wave of about 7,800 deaths in the first six to eight weeks of an outbreak.
Health officials often compare the anticipated avian flu pandemic with the 1918-1919 Spanish flu that killed more people than died in all of WWI. Like that virus, avian flu is expected to infect primarily young, healthy adults with strong immune systems. It lodges deep within the lungs, cases pneumonia and even if a patient is placed on a mechanical ventilator, death may occur within a few days of the onset of symptoms.
Ginny Ricker of the Maine Emergency Management Agency said earlier this week that businesses and individuals should be developing their own disaster plans as well as supporting their county planning efforts.
But so far, she said, the general public has shown little interest in the predictions of a significantly diminished work force, enforced quarantines and other potentially life-altering impacts of a major epidemic.
"How do we get the public to be aware?" she asked. "Will it be when the first incident is reported in Seattle and people realize, 'My God, this is really going to happen?'"
At the Maine CDC, Mills said it's important to remind people that the prediction of an avian flu outbreak is just that - a prediction.
"It may happen and it may not," she said. "What does seem certain is that we will have a pandemic eventually, whether it's avian influenza or something else."
And whenever that happens, she said, Maine will be well served by the intensive planning currently under way.
Leaders in all 16 counties ready outbreak response
Friday, April 28, 2006 - Bangor Daily News << Back
It's hard to imagine what might happen if Maine were to experience an outbreak of avian influenza. But that is exactly what community leaders in all 16 counties are being asked to do as they prepare a comprehensive response plan required by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the federal government.
Guided by a 15-page checklist issued by the Maine CDC last week, county-level directors from the Maine Emergency Management Agency have begun convening groups of key community members, ranging from health care providers and school superintendents to morticians and fire chiefs, to think about the unthinkable - an extensive breakdown of the social infrastructure accompanied by a surge in demand for the very services that are most likely to be unavailable.
By April 30, directors are instructed to have established pandemic planning "leadership teams" and a schedule of meetings, as well as a process for gathering and recording an extensive inventory of information.
The leadership team will then work with area responders and other statewide preparedness groups to create a plan for dealing with all manner of pandemic-related crises. A draft of each county's completed plan must be filed with the state by the beginning of August.
The plan must include a mechanism for monitoring how many hospital beds, doses of flu vaccine and mechanical ventilators are available in the county as well as how many bodies are piling up because there's no one available to bury or cremate them.
It must contain provisions for providing health care services, food and water to sick people who may be quarantined at home in order to limit the spread of the outbreak. If a vaccine becomes available, counties must have a plan for distributing that vaccine, or other medications, to a desperate and panicky population.
And planners are charged with ensuring the continued operation of key services such as police, fire, trash removal, fuel delivery and public utilities such as electricity, water and gas.
Because the goal is to keep people apart as much as possible, there will be no emergency shelters. Gathering places such as schools, churches, shopping centers, theaters, sports arenas, festivals and fairs are likely to be closed while the pandemic runs its course.
This could last from several weeks to a year or longer - and planners must make provisions for announcing those closing and providing alternatives as needed.
"It's a huge charge, no matter how you slice it," said Dr. Dora Mills, head of the Maine CDC. But, she added, several counties have already begun their planning process and she's confident that most will meet the August deadline.
Several rural counties such as Franklin and Aroostook are already well into their planning, she noted, perhaps because in sparsely populated regions "all the players already know each other."
Public health officials around the globe are predicting a major outbreak among humans of a virulent influenza strain that is presently affecting wild and domestic birds in Europe and Asia.
About 200 cases in humans have been reported, but they are thought to have been transmitted from infected birds to people who have come in close contact with them. About half the humans infected have died.
No cases in birds or humans have been reported in North America, but experts believe the disease in birds will make its way here this year, arriving first on the Pacific coast with migrating flocks of wild birds.
The public health community predicts the virus that causes the disease in birds may mutate into a form that is easily spread among humans by airborne droplets from coughs or sneezes. Given the ease of world travel, they say, it is likely that an avian flu outbreak, no matter where it begins, would spread quickly around the globe.
And because this particular strain is especially virulent, they predict high rates of infection and death. Conservative estimates from the federal CDC predict that 30 percent of Americans could be infected, and that two percent of those infected will die.
Maine officials anticipate a wave of about 7,800 deaths in the first six to eight weeks of an outbreak.
Health officials often compare the anticipated avian flu pandemic with the 1918-1919 Spanish flu that killed more people than died in all of WWI. Like that virus, avian flu is expected to infect primarily young, healthy adults with strong immune systems. It lodges deep within the lungs, cases pneumonia and even if a patient is placed on a mechanical ventilator, death may occur within a few days of the onset of symptoms.
Ginny Ricker of the Maine Emergency Management Agency said earlier this week that businesses and individuals should be developing their own disaster plans as well as supporting their county planning efforts.
But so far, she said, the general public has shown little interest in the predictions of a significantly diminished work force, enforced quarantines and other potentially life-altering impacts of a major epidemic.
"How do we get the public to be aware?" she asked. "Will it be when the first incident is reported in Seattle and people realize, 'My God, this is really going to happen?'"
At the Maine CDC, Mills said it's important to remind people that the prediction of an avian flu outbreak is just that - a prediction.
"It may happen and it may not," she said. "What does seem certain is that we will have a pandemic eventually, whether it's avian influenza or something else."
And whenever that happens, she said, Maine will be well served by the intensive planning currently under way.