AlaskaDenise
In Memoriam
The Health Ministry has admitted its systems to track down passengers who have arrived in New Zealand and may be carrying communicable diseases are "laborious, manual and often ineffective".
The ministry plans to overhaul how information is collected from airline passengers to try to maximise its chances of containing an international pandemic, such as bird flu, before it took hold in New Zealand.
It has issued a tender for consultants who are able to review its data collection methods and computer systems, and estimate how much it would cost the Government to bring them up to scratch.
New rules imposed by the World Health Organisation in June mean the ministry must be capable of monitoring chemical and radiological as well as biological health threats.
The Health Ministry says that as most passengers with infectious diseases would not show symptoms when they arrived in New Zealand, it was important passengers could be traced.
"The ability to rapidly contact those arriving in close proximity to the ill person, if required once a diagnosis has been made, greatly increases the opportunities to limit the spread of infection."
It would be useful to have an effective way to contact fellow passengers in "routine" situations where a visitor or returning resident was diagnosed by a GP with a communicable disease, it says.
"But an even greater challenge will be the requirement to rapidly contact recent arrivals during an international public health emergency".
This could involve contacting hundreds, if not thousands of people, it says. The ministry carried out a five- day exercise in May, called Cruickshank, to test the response of 30 government agencies and district health boards to a mock pandemic. One of the scenarios tested was that a plane had arrived in Palmerston North carrying 121 passengers from Asia, where an outbreak of bird flu had been reported, and that two of the passengers were sick.
The ministry says the exercise "highlighted the difficulties of relying on manual systems that are not integrated into other health management information systems".
When ill people are now identified before or on arrival, information about fellow passengers is collected at airports on the New Zealand version of an international passenger location form.
The form is additional to the standard arrival card that all passengers fill out, and asks that passengers provide full contact details of a family member or friend who would be able to help authorities trace their whereabouts while they are in New Zealand.
Ministry senior adviser Alyson Baker says the ministry is now printing copies of a public health international passenger locator card which has been ratified by the World Health Organisation.
Air New Zealand has agreed to carry the forms on its aircraft when they are printed. Ms Baker expects other airlines operating flights to New Zealand to also keep a supply.
The company that wins the ministry's consulting tender will look at opportunities to link its contact management systems with case management software that would be used to handle pandemics, as well as computer systems used by other government agencies, to speed up the flow of information in an emergency.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4204689a28.html
The ministry plans to overhaul how information is collected from airline passengers to try to maximise its chances of containing an international pandemic, such as bird flu, before it took hold in New Zealand.
It has issued a tender for consultants who are able to review its data collection methods and computer systems, and estimate how much it would cost the Government to bring them up to scratch.
New rules imposed by the World Health Organisation in June mean the ministry must be capable of monitoring chemical and radiological as well as biological health threats.
The Health Ministry says that as most passengers with infectious diseases would not show symptoms when they arrived in New Zealand, it was important passengers could be traced.
"The ability to rapidly contact those arriving in close proximity to the ill person, if required once a diagnosis has been made, greatly increases the opportunities to limit the spread of infection."
It would be useful to have an effective way to contact fellow passengers in "routine" situations where a visitor or returning resident was diagnosed by a GP with a communicable disease, it says.
"But an even greater challenge will be the requirement to rapidly contact recent arrivals during an international public health emergency".
This could involve contacting hundreds, if not thousands of people, it says. The ministry carried out a five- day exercise in May, called Cruickshank, to test the response of 30 government agencies and district health boards to a mock pandemic. One of the scenarios tested was that a plane had arrived in Palmerston North carrying 121 passengers from Asia, where an outbreak of bird flu had been reported, and that two of the passengers were sick.
The ministry says the exercise "highlighted the difficulties of relying on manual systems that are not integrated into other health management information systems".
When ill people are now identified before or on arrival, information about fellow passengers is collected at airports on the New Zealand version of an international passenger location form.
The form is additional to the standard arrival card that all passengers fill out, and asks that passengers provide full contact details of a family member or friend who would be able to help authorities trace their whereabouts while they are in New Zealand.
Ministry senior adviser Alyson Baker says the ministry is now printing copies of a public health international passenger locator card which has been ratified by the World Health Organisation.
Air New Zealand has agreed to carry the forms on its aircraft when they are printed. Ms Baker expects other airlines operating flights to New Zealand to also keep a supply.
The company that wins the ministry's consulting tender will look at opportunities to link its contact management systems with case management software that would be used to handle pandemics, as well as computer systems used by other government agencies, to speed up the flow of information in an emergency.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4204689a28.html