# 2952
The NHS is the National Health Service, and they’ve just released a new, simple, and fairly generic booklet on pandemic influenza geared for businesses.
The booklet is available as a 27-page PDF File.
Old hands at pandemic preparedness won’t find much new here, but for businesses that have yet to seriously prepare, this makes a good primer.
While this is released by, and for the UK, it could certainly be used as an introduction to pandemic flu for businesses in any country.
Pandemic flu guidance for businesses: risk assessment in the occupational setting
Document type: Guidance
Author: Department of Health and Health Protection agency in collaboration with the Health and Safety Executive, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform and Cabinet Office.
Published date: 27 March 2009
Publication format: A4
Gateway reference: Not required
Pages: 27
Copyright holder: Crown
As the introduction explains, preparing for a pandemic is everyone’s business:
Everyone will be involved in the fight against pandemic influenza (flu) in terms of managing the impact it will have on society and preventing further spread of the infection.
This booklet explains how businesses can help reduce the spread of flu. it provides information to allow businesses to assess the types of measures that may be used in their particular occupational setting.
Introduction
The Health Protection agency and the department of Health have worked closely with the healthcare sector and certain non-healthcare services, such as the police and fire and rescue services, to develop pandemic influenza infection control guidance for specific occupational settings (available Here)
However, it is not possible to outline detailed pandemic influenza infection control guidance for every occupation or to cover every conceivable scenario where a person might be exposed to the risk of infection from flu.
With this in mind, this simple and generic guidance has been developed to raise awareness of the measures that may be employed to reduce the spread of the flu virus at work. it aims to:
●● allow businesses to evaluate potential situations where there may be possible exposure to the flu virus
●● describe the steps that can be taken to moderate any potential exposure to the flu virus in the workplace●● set out the measures that might be used to reduce the spread of the flu virus in the workplace
●● provide a matrix that can be used to consider the best ways of reducing the spread of flu in a work environment
●● put into context the relative value of personal protective equipment, including the wearing of face masks,1 when compared with other environmental and organisational approaches.
Information on pandemic flu specific to businesses can be found on the UK resilience website
A hat tip to UK-Bird on the Flu Wiki for posting this link.
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