It was part of an emergency preparation for a different type of natural disaster that would make tornados, floods and hurricanes look mild in comparison.

A mock exercise conducted Aug. 6 at the Fayette County Health Department brought together a group of local emergency response staffers to interact with each other and those in the 12-county region of Georgia Department of Public Health District 4 in a theoretical response to an outbreak of avian influenza.

“The primary purpose of the exercise was to assess the ability of the 12 counties in District 4 Public Health to communicate and coordinate with the District Operations Center (DOC) using WebEOC, Southern Linc, land lines, email, and cell phones,” said District 4 Public Information Officer Hayla Hall who was stationed at the District 4 command center in LaGrange. “The exercise was a success in that opportunities for improvement were identified, community partners and leadership participated and community dialogue was established.”

Those attending the meeting included staff from Fayette County Fire and Emergency Services (Fayette FES), Fayette Public Health, Piedmont-Fayette Hospital, Fayette Factor, E-911, Red Cross and the city of Peachtree City.

The exercise was one of several response exercises that have been conducted across Fayette County in recent years. It will not be the last. This specific exercise was designed to address potential response to an erupting avian flu pandemic and to ensure effective communication between local and regional emergency responders and between local responders and the community.

“I’m a firm believer that the first 15 minutes dictates the next five months,” said Fayette FES Capt. Pete Nelms. “We’ve developed a lot of infrastructure over time through things like Homeland Security grants to help in our local response.”

Exercise moderator Clint Steerman, with Augusta-based Metro One EMS, noted the extent to which Fayette exercise participants interacted to address community needs.

“Most of the time people can’t agree,” Steerman said. “Here, you guys are sitting around the table working together with things organized.”

Specific to an avian flu pandemic, participants discussed factors such as measures for tracking infection rates, communication with the public, instructing citizens to isolate themselves, the continuity of government and emergency operations, communication with outside assistance agencies and rendering medical and other forms of care.

Such exercises can be conducted in a variety forms, now and in the future. They are completely relevant given the reality that, from the perspective of the federal government, each community is on its own to respond to the pandemic. The term stated to participants in the exercise was YOYO: you’re on your own.

Avian flu and its potential for a catastrophic impact in nations around the world is nothing to ignore. The problem is not in the sheer numbers of humans yet affected. The problem is in the number of deaths resulting from those who do become infected. The current worldwide mortality rate is 63 percent, according to figures released last week by the World Health Organization (WHO).

By comparison, perhaps the most virulent virus known today is Ebola that carries a mortality rate of approximately 70 percent, according to WHO.

To date, 243 people in 15 countries have died from H5N1 infection since 2003 and only two cases of human-to-human transmission are thought to have occurred since H5N1 hit the world scene in 1997.

What worries health and emergency services workers is the potential for sustained human-to-human transmission of a virulent form of influenza, such as H5N1. If sustained human-to-human transmission were triggered, the outcome would set the stage today for a global pandemic.

Most influenza viruses tend to stay within their species. But that does not always occur, as evidenced by past swine flu outbreaks and, in a far more dire set of circumstances, the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people worldwide.

Since 1997, preventative measures have been taken to destroy domestic fowl infected with H5N1. Those efforts have result in the killing of hundreds of millions of chickens, geese and ducks in central and southeast Asia.

A part of the problem with H5N1 and all flu viruses is the rapid pace with which they mutate into new strains. On the epidemiological radar earlier this week was a new strain of H5N1 discovered in birds in oil-rich Nigeria, according to United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO). The new strain is different from those that circulated in Africa during outbreaks in 2006 and 2007 but is similar to strains found in Iran, Italy and Afghanistan in 2007, the report said.

While those nations and continents may seem far away, the reality is that with the current state of global travel, a person infected by a family member could arrive at an airport in Bangkok or Shanghai, board an airplane and land in Los Angeles 14 hours later.

Everyone hopes that neither H5N1 nor any other variant of avian flu will ever reach the threshold for sufficient human-to-human transmission to trigger a pandemic. But the reality is that pandemics have occurred before and will occur again. And today, the world is a very small place.

For more information on H5N1 visit www.pandemicflu.gov.

login to post comments