TheFluMaster
Resident
What if the bird flu hit Arizona?
Friday, August 3, 2007 8:30 AM PDT
By Jesse Froehling
The deadly H5N1 virus is now in Arizona, but Santa Cruz County health officials are wrestling the flu to the ground.
As of July 24, health officials had confirmed 23 cases of the virus - known commonly as the bird flu - in Arizona. Phoenix health officials have confirmed 15 in their city. There are eight in Tucson and one Mexican national in the Tucson area has the virus as well, health officials said.
The avian flu became entrenched here when the virus migrated across Asia to Europe. On July 7, two travelers from Southeast Asia were diagnosed with the virus in a laboratory in New York City. Once entrenched on the East Coast, the disease spread westward like a rumor until the Center for Disease Control declared a national pandemic on July 20.
The center for disease control sent a massive amount of medication called a strategic national stockpile to the state of Arizona. That shipment arrived in Phoenix on Thursday, July 26.
That medicine was then divided and sent to the counties. Santa Cruz County got its shipment the following day and it became Luis Chaboya's responsibility to distribute the medication among the people. Chaboya is the Santa Cruz County Emergency Management director. Emergency workers accepted the medication at one of three designated warehouses in Nogales, which is obligatory.
Santa Cruz County received 10 pallets of medication at 9 a.m. Friday under DPS escort. Once the pallets were broken down, local law enforcement officers escorted the medication to stations around the county called points of dispensing or PODs. It is here where people came to receive the medication.
If you haven't figured it out yet, the "pandemic" was an exercise for emergency-management directors. The pallets in this case were cardboard boxes and the medication was M&Ms. The exercise forced emergency-management workers to actually run through the steps they would take if a deadly virus were to set foot in Arizona.
The exercise does, however, force participants to take one large leap of faith. It assumes there is a cure. The avian flu is perhaps the most deadly virus on the planet. The World Health Organization estimates it kills some 60 percent of the people who contract it. The severity of the disease is further exacerbated by the flu-like symptoms it carries - coughing, sore throat, fever and muscle aches.
Many people don't know they have it until it's too late. Although several vaccines have been developed, the virus mutates quite rapidly, rendering a recently developed vaccine useless. Treatments are limited. The one saving grace of the disease is that it has not yet mutated into a form that is able to jump from human to human. Victims fall into contact with the disease after extensive handling of poultry. Therefore, the only really effective cure is to kill birds.
For the purposes of the exercise, the county set up three make-believe PODs and one real one at Fleischer Park, where nurses, pharmacists and volunteers helped distribute the medication to other volunteers representing average citizens.
"Some went through OK," Chaboya said, but others went through and said 'Hi, I'm Hellen Keller and I can't see,' or, 'I'm Alexander Graham Bell and I can't hear.' One lady had dementia."
It then became the emergency workers' jobs to navigate these complications as efficiently as possible. Chaboya said the workers performed admirably.
"I have to say they were attended to very well," he said. In this instance, the volunteers were urged to take their medication - two M&Ms in the morning and two at night - sparingly. But most gobbled them up despite doctors' orders.
The exercise was conducted from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Chaboya said that although the exercise went well, there is still much to learn. Evaluators from Pima and Cochise counties, as well as the Tohono O'odham nation, evaluated the exercise and Chaboya said the county will receive reports from those evaluations soon.
Despite the reports, Chaboya said that the county has already learned lessons from the event.
"There are a few areas we need to polish," he said. "Most of it is minor stuff that some training will take care of. And, we need to update our plans, which we are always doing. But, if we were perfect, why have an exercise?"
http://www.nogalesinternational.com/articles/2007/08/03/news/news1.txt
Friday, August 3, 2007 8:30 AM PDT
By Jesse Froehling
The deadly H5N1 virus is now in Arizona, but Santa Cruz County health officials are wrestling the flu to the ground.
As of July 24, health officials had confirmed 23 cases of the virus - known commonly as the bird flu - in Arizona. Phoenix health officials have confirmed 15 in their city. There are eight in Tucson and one Mexican national in the Tucson area has the virus as well, health officials said.
The avian flu became entrenched here when the virus migrated across Asia to Europe. On July 7, two travelers from Southeast Asia were diagnosed with the virus in a laboratory in New York City. Once entrenched on the East Coast, the disease spread westward like a rumor until the Center for Disease Control declared a national pandemic on July 20.
The center for disease control sent a massive amount of medication called a strategic national stockpile to the state of Arizona. That shipment arrived in Phoenix on Thursday, July 26.
That medicine was then divided and sent to the counties. Santa Cruz County got its shipment the following day and it became Luis Chaboya's responsibility to distribute the medication among the people. Chaboya is the Santa Cruz County Emergency Management director. Emergency workers accepted the medication at one of three designated warehouses in Nogales, which is obligatory.
Santa Cruz County received 10 pallets of medication at 9 a.m. Friday under DPS escort. Once the pallets were broken down, local law enforcement officers escorted the medication to stations around the county called points of dispensing or PODs. It is here where people came to receive the medication.
If you haven't figured it out yet, the "pandemic" was an exercise for emergency-management directors. The pallets in this case were cardboard boxes and the medication was M&Ms. The exercise forced emergency-management workers to actually run through the steps they would take if a deadly virus were to set foot in Arizona.
The exercise does, however, force participants to take one large leap of faith. It assumes there is a cure. The avian flu is perhaps the most deadly virus on the planet. The World Health Organization estimates it kills some 60 percent of the people who contract it. The severity of the disease is further exacerbated by the flu-like symptoms it carries - coughing, sore throat, fever and muscle aches.
Many people don't know they have it until it's too late. Although several vaccines have been developed, the virus mutates quite rapidly, rendering a recently developed vaccine useless. Treatments are limited. The one saving grace of the disease is that it has not yet mutated into a form that is able to jump from human to human. Victims fall into contact with the disease after extensive handling of poultry. Therefore, the only really effective cure is to kill birds.
For the purposes of the exercise, the county set up three make-believe PODs and one real one at Fleischer Park, where nurses, pharmacists and volunteers helped distribute the medication to other volunteers representing average citizens.
"Some went through OK," Chaboya said, but others went through and said 'Hi, I'm Hellen Keller and I can't see,' or, 'I'm Alexander Graham Bell and I can't hear.' One lady had dementia."
It then became the emergency workers' jobs to navigate these complications as efficiently as possible. Chaboya said the workers performed admirably.
"I have to say they were attended to very well," he said. In this instance, the volunteers were urged to take their medication - two M&Ms in the morning and two at night - sparingly. But most gobbled them up despite doctors' orders.
The exercise was conducted from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Chaboya said that although the exercise went well, there is still much to learn. Evaluators from Pima and Cochise counties, as well as the Tohono O'odham nation, evaluated the exercise and Chaboya said the county will receive reports from those evaluations soon.
Despite the reports, Chaboya said that the county has already learned lessons from the event.
"There are a few areas we need to polish," he said. "Most of it is minor stuff that some training will take care of. And, we need to update our plans, which we are always doing. But, if we were perfect, why have an exercise?"
http://www.nogalesinternational.com/articles/2007/08/03/news/news1.txt