Experts Criticize Plans For Coping With Flu Outbreak - Getting the Response to Swine Flu Right - Conversation Starter - hzrn.com

Getting the Response to Swine Flu Right - Conversation Starter ::
The rapid evolution of the swine flu outbreak just happened to coincide with pandemic response plans developed after the SARS and avian flu outbreaks in recent years. Myles Druckman, MD, is a pandemic expert and Vice President, Criticize ideas, not the people behind them. No multimedia.
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Experts Criticize Plans For Coping With Flu Outbreak
By CHRISTOPHER LEE
Washington Post
February 3, 2008
WASHINGTON —The federal government's voluminous plans for dealing with pandemic flu do not adequately account for the overwhelming strain an outbreak would place on hospitals and public health systems trying to cope with millions of seriously ill Americans, some public health experts and local health officials say.

The Bush administration's plans, which run more than 1,000 pages, contemplate the nightmare medical scenarios that many experts fear, but critics say federal officials have left too much of the responsibility and the cost of preparing to a health-care system that even in normal times is stretched to the breaking point and leaves millions of people without adequate access to care.

"The amount going into actually being prepared at a community level is not enough," said Patrick Libbey, executive director of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. "We are still talking about rearranging with little additional resources the assets of a system that are built on such a thin margin now that you have significant amounts of people without access to care, and hospitals that are periodically shutting down their ERs and the like."

US should learn from UK in Swine Flu control - soc.culture ::
2 posts - 1 author - Last post: May 23But experts criticize the strategy for wasting valuable medicine and "We are still in the early phases of the swine flu outbreak," a swine flu with Tamiflu and have no plans to change who they test. Experts
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The Bush administration argues that it is doing a lot to help communities as part of its strategy for dealing with the flu threat. It has doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in preparedness grants for hospitals and public health systems every year, subsidized the stockpiling of antiviral drugs, conferred with governors and encouraged resource-sharing plans among hospitals.

Its larger strategy involves partnering with other countries to quickly identify and contain potential outbreaks overseas, developing vaccines and other medical measures to limit the spread of the virus if it reaches U.S. shores, and working with state and local officials to keep the economy and society functioning as normally as possible. But administration officials acknowledge that gaps remain.

Preparing the public for a major disaster like pandemic flu ::
But in most cases, risk experts say, people soon settle into a "new normal" and get on to those involved but are essential for containing a pandemic outbreak. Flu experts have criticized the U.S. plan for relying too much on the
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"We're seeing substantial progress across the board in terms of various aspects of preparedness for flu," said William Raub, science adviser to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. "But I won't sugarcoat this. In virtually every area, we have a good way to go. ... It would not take much of an unmitigated pandemic to overwhelm the hospital system."

A serious outbreak and its fallout would probably overwhelm medical centers, cause lengthy delays in emergency and routine care, and trigger shortages of beds, ventilators, drugs, masks, gloves and other supplies, experts said. Unlike a hurricane or a terrorist bombing, the crisis would drag on for months and affect communities nationwide at the same time.

Fact Sheet:The Administration's Record on Avian Flu::
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTMLExperts recommended major new investments in public health, incentives for criticizing the Administration's failure to develop a national response plan. GAO outbreak of infectious disease, the Institute of Medicine called for, . In February 2004, GAO reiterated that “federal plans for the purchase,
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Doctors and nurses would be swamped at a time when many of them and their family members would also be falling seriously ill, thinning their ranks and forcing some to choose between helping loved ones or patients.

A vaccine, if one becomes available, could be difficult to transport and distribute, and imperfect vaccines and antiviral drugs used in the early stages of an outbreak probably could not forestall a pandemic. The "just in time" economy on which many hospitals rely for shipments of drugs and medical supplies, many of them from overseas manufacturers, would quickly fall apart.

"If we have even a moderate-sized pandemic, these supply chains are going down overnight," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy at the University of Minnesota.

Osterholm and others said that a serious flu outbreak would be nearly impossible to contain and that building the medical capacity to treat the surge of victims would require billions more in sustained federal aid. Moreover, health experts say there should be greater attention paid to who will control scarce resources and to how people will get care at home and in other non-hospital settings.

"The priority focus within U.S. pandemic plans on controlling contagion has unwittingly diverted attention from the problem of caring for the sick," said Monica Schoch-Spana, a senior associate with the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and an assistant professor in the university's medical school.

Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland, said the federal effort amounts to a "classic" unfunded mandate.

Since late 2005, Congress and the president have devoted more than $6 billion to pandemic flu preparedness, although little has gone directly to states and communities. The vast majority has been spent on researching vaccines and building the capacity to manufacture and distribute them, and on antiviral drugs and overseas disease surveillance, analysts said.

Near the end of 2005, the government also allocated a separate $600 million, one-time pot of money for pandemic preparedness grants to states and localities, as well as another $170 million to help states buy antiviral drugs, but much of that money has been spent already. Other grants for state and local bioterrorism preparedness and hospital emergency preparedness total hundreds of millions of dollars annually, but they have declined in recent years.

Not too surprising. San Francisco, even after the '06 earthquake and fire, not to mention Loma Prieta, is woefully unready. They have less Firemen now than in '06! So disaster prep of all kinds is behind the curve. Look at FEMA!