Pandemic Flu Committee to hold three-day workshop
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
By Marconi Calindas
Reporter
The Department of Public Health Pandemic Influenza Policy Advisory Committee and its Technical Advisory Committee members will be attending the Pandemic Influenza Seminar and Table Top Game.
The Department of Defense Joint Task Force-Homeland Defense, in collaboration with the CNMI Office of Homeland Security, is hosting the three-day workshop. DPH Secretary Joseph Kevin P. Villagomez invited the committee members to join the event.
The workshop is scheduled on March 14 to 16 from 8am to 4pm at the Pacific Islands Club.
?The seminar and table top game will start with our pandemic influenza plans, preparations, and experiences, exercising them in a multi-agency essential services-key infrastructure environment,? he said.
Villagomez added that the trainers from the Homeland Defense would bring significant information on a host of topics including public information campaigns, hygiene, non-pharmaceutical interventions, logistics, quarantine, and medical or public health related topics.
He said the workshop aims to achieve at the end of the training more knowledge about the strengths of the plans and preparations as well as determine what additional work might be required to make them operational.
DPH earlier said that there has been no reported case of infections of the dreaded flu in the CNMI.
Latest development on the H5N1 virus strain according to the World Health Organization includes a report from the Ministry of Health in China on March 1 about one case of human infection with the H5N1 avian influenza virus.
WHO said the case is about a 44-year-old woman from Jian'ou county, Fujian, China. ?She became ill with fever and pneumonia on Feb. 18 and was hospitalized on Feb. 22 where she remains in critical condition,? said WHO, adding that the case was laboratory confirmed by the Fujian provincial laboratory on Feb. 26 and by the national laboratory the next day.
The information provided to WHO earlier that the victim is a farmer who kept birds in her backyard and possibly exposed her to sick birds. However, an investigation is still under way to determine if this exposure was the source of her infection. Close contacts have been placed under medical observation.
Of the 23 cases confirmed to date in China, 14 have been fatal.