# 693
Slowly, the word is getting out to the people who really need to hear it; the civic and faith based organizations that will be crucial allies in any fight against a pandemic. The government can't be expected to handle all of the problems across the nation in a pandemic.
They will need the help of citizen volunteers.
This from Disasternews.net.
Question is 'when,' not 'if,' for pandemic
Faith-based and community responders told to get prepared.
BY P.J. HELLER |ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. | April 23, 2007
Dr. Scott Santibanez of the CDC urges disaster responders to prepare for pandemic flu.
Warning that the U.S. is "overdue and unprepared" for a flu pandemic, disaster response organizations are being advised to prepare now much the same way they would for any major disaster.
"Just as communities plan and prepare for mitigating the effects of severe natural disasters like hurricanes, they should plan and prepare for mitigating the effects of a severe pandemic," said Dr. Scott Santibanez of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"We do think it's a time to prepare," he told attendees at the 15th annual National Voluntary Organizations in Disaster conference here. "It's not a time to panic, but it is a time to be preparing."
Santibanez, a physician trained in infectious diseases who now heads the CDC's partnership with faith-based and community organizations, said it was not a question of if a pandemic would hit, but when.
"We're walking that line between we don't want people to panic because there's no pandemic right now," he said. "But we need to prepare because at some point there will be another pandemic. We just don't know exactly when."
Santibanez said a pandemic typically occurs three times each century. The most deadly influenza pandemic in the 20th century occurred in 1918, which killed as many as 50 million people worldwide. Pandemics also occurred in 1957 and 1968.
"We know there's going to be another pandemic at some point, just because cyclically that's the way it happens," Santibanez said. "We don't know when the next pandemic is going to be. We don't know how many people it's going to affect. And we don't know if it's going to be the H5N1 bird flu that you've heard about."
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He stressed local planning and preparation was essential since help from other areas across the nation would not be forthcoming because those areas would also be coping with the pandemic. The pandemic could last six to eight weeks, as it did in 1918, or could be even longer, he said.
"All areas across the U.S. will be working on their own area at the same time," Santibanez said. "They won't be able to deploy and help out other areas that have been hit hard.
"Pandemic planning must occur at all levels of government, all sectors of society and we must develop a nationwide plan," he said. "This can't just be a government response."
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