# 1808
Periodically the HHS (Department of Health & Human Services) releases an update on where the nation stands in it's pandemic preparedness.
The last update was released in July of 2007, the latest, update V, on March 17th of this year.
Download the entire document, but I've posted the web links and Secretary Leavitt's Message below.
Pandemic Update V
Contents:
- Message from the Secretary
- Monitoring and Surveillance
- Medical Countermeasures
- Antiviral Drugs
- State and Local Preparedness
- Communications and Outreach
- Timeline
Forty million people died when the last major influenza pandemic swept around the world in 1918. We have seen two less severe pandemics since then. We will no doubt see another sometime in the future. We don’t know when, and we don’t know how bad it will be. But we know it will happen sooner or later and that what we do now will save lives — maybe millions of lives — in the future.
We have come a long way since November 2005, when President Bush mobilized the nation to prepare for an influenza pandemic. HHS continues to play a prominent role in pandemic preparedness, giving highest priority to those tasks that it is best positioned or uniquely able to undertake. These include:
- stockpiling pre-pandemic vaccine and antiviral drugs;
- providing financial and technical assistance to States to help them, among other things, create complementary stockpiles of antiviral drugs and develop and test various mitigation strategies;
- creating a domestic vaccine production capacity commensurate with the expected requirements of a pandemic;
- sponsoring advanced development projects toward the next generation of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics; and
In our last Update, we mentioned many of the important milestones we have passed already. We have licensed the first H5N1 influenza vaccine for humans and stockpiled enough antiviral medicine to treat 40 million Americans. We have committed over $1 billion to diversify influenza vaccine production technology. And we have worked with the world’s leading vaccine companies to accelerate the development of cell-based influenza vaccine production to increase the nation’s domestic vaccine production capacity. We have also invested heavily in clinical research and surveillance programs here at home and around the world.
We have held flu summits in every State of the Union, plus our first on-line “blog summit” last June. We have organized, equipped, and trained response teams and begun to modernize the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps to enhance its response capabilities.
Since our last Update, we have entered a new phase in our preparations. The milestones are farther apart but no less significant. We are now tackling some challenging issues that can only be resolved with the collaboration of the full range of stakeholders — State and local officials, public health and medical professionals, religious leaders and ethicists, the business community, organized labor, non-governmental organizations, and individuals from all walks of life.
Each is needed to find the best answers to difficult questions such as “How do we decide who receives the first vaccines from our limited supplies?” and “Who should be responsible for stockpiling medical countermeasures such as facemasks, respirators, ventilators, and antiviral medications?”
These issues will have a significant impact on how States, counties, cities, communities, corporations, families, and individuals prepare for and respond to pandemic disease. None can be addressed fairly and fully without the participation of the persons likely to be affected.
We have mounted an unprecedented effort on the part of the Department and the Federal government to garner thoughts and comments on these issues from as many people as possible, using new communication tools such as blogs and web casts as well as large public forums, smaller group meetings, and conference calls.
In December 2007, the Department held its first ever web dialogue to discuss the proposed vaccine allocation plan. More than 400 people from 37 States took part in the five-day on-line conversation with Federal, State, and local health officials. The web dialogue followed two public meetings on vaccine allocation, in Henderson, NC, and Milwaukee, WI. We have also met with various stakeholder representatives to discuss the feedback from the public meetings and the web dialogue.
A cross-government working group was then tasked with defining a priority order for administering vaccine to counter an influenza pandemic. That group now is weighing the information received from the rounds of public consultation and is updating an earlier draft document to accommodate the most persuasive comments and critiques. The intent is to have a plan suitable for public release within the next several months.
“This isn’t just about us, it’s about our neighborhoods and where we live.”
– Dr. Greg Dworkin,
founding editor,
Flu Wiki blog
Through the fall of 2007, we also held nearly twenty meetings around the country to discuss the shared responsibility concept of stockpiling medical countermeasures and the feasibility of private-sector stockpiling of antivirals. These meetings included senior leaders and subject matter specialists from throughout the Federal government, along with governors, mayors, State and local health officials, employers, health care providers, first responders, organized labor and law enforcement. Some meetings were conducted by conference call, but we also met in Atlanta, GA, Seattle, WA, Scottsdale, AZ, the Raleigh-Durham, NC, area, and Washington, DC.
In December, we launched a public education campaign to encourage people to prepare now for a future pandemic. The campaign, titled Take the Lead: Working Together to Prepare Now, is aimed at community leaders such as clergy, employers, and health care providers, and is designed to provide them with the information they need to communicate the importance of pandemic planning by families and individuals. It was developed after consultation with over a hundred leading organizations such as the American Medical Association, Catholic Health Association, Red Cross, Lions Clubs, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. We also held our first-ever blog featuring ten prominent leaders blogging over a five-week period on the subject of individual pandemic planning. The blog attracted more than 35,000 individual visitors, 1,600 comments, and more than 300 in-bound links from other websites, blogs and message boards.
There’s still much to be done. Preparedness is a process — learning, adapting, and growing. In 2008, we will continue these unprecedented efforts to reach out to stakeholders for help in shaping some of the most difficult pandemic planning issues. We will also be finalizing policies and guidance based on the input we have received thus far.
The media buzz has died down, but the “bird flu” virus has not. Avian influenza is still highly pathogenic, inflicting a heavy toll on domestic and wild bird populations in Asia, Europe, and Africa and, from time to time, infecting humans. To date, some 370 people have contracted the disease, largely through exposure to sick or dead birds; 235 of them have died.
We don’t know if the H5N1 virus will spark the next pandemic, but we know that it’s just a matter of time before something does. There is simply no reason to believe that this century will be different than any past century. The difference now is that we better understand the threat, so we can increase our preparedness for a pandemic before it comes, in order to diminish its potential impact.
The Federal government cannot mount an effective response to the threats that we face as a nation without partners at every level of government and throughout society. It is every American’s continued commitment that will make our country a safer and a healthier place.
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